Note (Back to main text) — HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF THE 20th OF MARCH. (continued 3)

A few royalists, at the head of whom figured M. de Maubreuil and M. Sostène de la Rochefoucault, were guilty of this profanation. M. de Rochefoucault, whose family had shared so largely in the gifts and favours of Napoleon, himself put a rope about the neck of his benefactor, with intention to have it dragged through the mud by some vagabonds, whom he had hired: but the statue mocked his endeavours; and the only fruit he reaped from them was the reprobation of honest men, and the contempt of foreigners[93].