This report told the truth. Alexandre de Beauharnais had once more
been denounced, and this second accusation was his sentence of
death. For some time past the fanatical Jacobins had invented a new
means to find guilty ones for the guillotine, and to keep the veins
bleeding, so as to restore France to health. They sent emissaries
into the prisons to instigate conspiracies among the prisoners, and
to find out men wretched enough to purchase their life by accusing
their prison companions, and by delivering them over to the
executioner's axe. Such a spy had been sent into that portion of the
prison where Beauharnais was, and he had begun his horrible work,
for he had kindled discord and strife among the prisoners, and had
won a few to his sinister projects. But Beauharnais's keen eye had
discovered the traitor, and he had loudly and openly denounced him
to his fellow-prisoners. The next day, the spy disappeared from the
prison, but as he went he swore bloody vengeance on General de
Beauharnais. [Footnote: "Memoires du Comte de Lavalette," vol. i.,
p. 175.]
And he kept his word; the next morning De Beauharnais was summoned
for trial, and the gloomy, hateful faces of his judges, their
hostile questions and reproaches, the capital crimes they accused
him of, led him to conclude that his death was decided upon, and
that he was doomed to the guillotine.
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