The family returned home on foot, in patriarchal fashion, accompanied by five or six friends, who, like myself, were on their way to the rue de Vaugirard, to take tea and nibble cake together there. As I was the stranger, I was allotted the position of honour--namely, to give my arm to Madame Waldor. As the distance was very long, it was a good opportunity of becoming acquainted. But, as we had never seen each other or spoken together before, the long walk would have been embarrassing to us both, had not Delanoue joined us and made a third in the conversation between the place du Palais-Royal and the rue de Vaugirard. He thereby rendered us both a great service, for which both of us were profoundly grateful to him.
What a strange thing these chance meetings are! How astonished I should have been had anyone told me that this family, whose very existence I had not known a couple of hours before, and who were complete strangers to me, would become for the next two or three years almost as close to me as my own, and that I should traverse the road that then seemed to me so long between the rue du faubourg-Saint-Denis and the rue de Vaugirard twice every day in future!
But I was in haste to reach our destination, to have a talk with M. Villenave. I do not remember how it was, or on what occasion, but a pamphlet he had written fell into my hands--a little work he had published in 1794, entitled _Relation des noyades de cent trente-deux Nantais_ (Story of the drowning of a hundred and thirty-two people of Nantes). Directly I saw M. Villenave I remembered this pamphlet, and as soon as I thought of the pamphlet I resolved to lead the conversation to Carrier, and Nantes and the hundred and thirty-two Nantais. It was not a difficult matter to set M. Villenave talking; only, his conversation was very much like a sermon. When he talked, one had to let him go on, not interrupt him, and listen to him with reverent attention. He had, indeed, happened to be at Nantes in 1793, at the same time as Jean-Baptiste Carrier, of bloody memory. God forbid we should make the faintest excuses for that terrible proconsul and the horrors he perpetrated! But it must be admitted that the Vendeans had themselves set him an abominable example. Wars conducted by priests are apt to be barbarous wars, and it is known--or rather, it is not known, that at the beginning the insurrection was entirely in the hands of priests; the nobles did not involve themselves in it until later, and, when they did take part in it, the method of butchery became rather more humane: it changed to shooting. The first person to play a part in that bloody squabble was a sacristan named Cathelineau. Machiavelli says that, "When it was decided to. assassinate Julian de Medicis in the church of Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs, they chose ecclesiastics to do the work of assassination, because they were less likely to be impressed by the sanctity of the place."