On the 10th of Vend?miaire, year
III.,[134] there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete
assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles,
silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the
same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons,
censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk,"
etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property
of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word
for it, "deposited them for safe keeping in his son's house during the
month of June, 1792 (old style);" - could a good son refuse his father
such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in '93 and '94, during
the young man's municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the
Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an
off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his
father, a free individual, from looking after "his own affairs"
and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?
If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must
they be on the sale of real estate? - It is on this traffic that the
fortunes of the clever terrorists are founded.
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