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Suffice it to say that, though the Hapsburg lands in Swabia were threatened by Moreau's Army of the Rhine, Francis determined at all costs to recover his Italian possessions.
But gray or blue, or North or South in birth, he is in every essential a Southerner, as many, like S.S. Prentiss, curiously independent of nativity, are. He is well received and courteously entreated. He has his little suppers at Moreau's, and knows the ways of the place and names of the waiters.
His vanity, interest, and policy, all required this last degree of supremacy and elevation at that period. Bonaparte had so well penetrated the weak side of Moreau's character that, although he could not avoid doing justice to this general's military talents and exploits, he neither esteemed him as a citizen nor dreaded him as a rival.
The creature was scarcely so intelligent as the Ape-man, but far more docile, and the most human-looking of all the Beast Folk; and Montgomery had trained it to prepare food, and indeed to discharge all the trivial domestic offices that were required. It was a complex trophy of Moreau's horrible skill, a bear, tainted with dog and ox, and one of the most elaborately made of all his creatures.
One doubt M. de La Tour d'Azyr had entertained, though only faintly, to mar the perfect serenity of his growing optimism. That doubt concerned this man Moreau and his relations with M. de Kercadiou. He knew what once they had been, and how changed they subsequently were by the ingratitude of Moreau's own behavior in turning against the class to which his benefactor belonged.
Bonaparte could not bear intriguing women. Besides, on one occasion Madame Moreau's mother, when at Malmaison, had indulged in sharp remarks on a suspected scandalous intimacy between Bonaparte and his young sister Caroline, then just married. Luneville having been fixed upon for the Congress, the First Consul sent his brother Joseph to treat with Count Louis de Cobentzel.
No similar event that has since occurred can convey an idea of the fermentation which then prevailed in Paris. The indignation excited by Moreau's arrest was openly manifested, and braved the observation of the police.
He had published some very astonishing facts in connection with the transfusion of blood, and in addition was known to be doing valuable work on morbid growths. Then suddenly his career was closed. He had to leave England. On the day of its publication a wretched dog, flayed and otherwise mutilated, escaped from Moreau's house.
If Moreau's faults can ever be excused, it might be on the score of his persistent kindness in succoring a woman of whose favors he had once been proud, and in whose house he was hidden when in peril of his life.
Yet it was very important that we should know the real state of affairs, and the sentiments of those whom Bonaparte had counted among his rivals in glory, and whom he might now meet among his rivals in ambition. Moreau's military reputation stood very high, and Bernadotte's firmness appeared inflexible.
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