AN EPISODE OF THE TERROR:

A ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

"Glückselig ist wer Liebe rein geniesst,

Weil doch zuletzt das Grab so Lieb' als Hass verschliesst."

-GOETHE.

PRAIRIAL, year 2. The red fool fury of the Seine

was at its height. It was the time which stands distinct in human history as the Reign of Terror. French demoniac frenzy revelled in its saturnalia of vengeance.

The eighteen prisons of Paris were choked with more than twelve thousand prisoners. Since May no account had been kept of the number guillotined. Indictments had ceased to have so much as plausibility. Denunciation was death. Fouquier-Tinville sat permanently. He snatched his meals at the table on which he signed the sentences of death; he slept upon a matrass in the revolutionary tribunal; he allowed himself no rest; he kept blank indictments ready, which were afterwards filled up with names. He sentenced in batches, the Fournées of the Revolution. His mind, he said, was so troubled with horror, that it seemed to him, as it had seemed to Danton, that the Seine rolled in blood.

Indefatigable as he was, Fouquier-Tinville alone could not overtake his work. The decree of the twenty-second prairial, which give extension to the Law of the Suspect, rendered necessary the creation of

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four similar revolutionary tribunals, each to have its own president, all to labour at once, without formalities, and so to execute satisfactorily the vengeance of the Republic. Fouquier-Tinville's scheme of a guillotine of improved velocity, to work under cover in an apartment adjoining the tribunal itself, was not approved, as the Committee of Public Safety desired to awaken the better feelings of the people by the imposing spectacle of one hundred and fifty heads falling daily and in public.

Meanwhile the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of the Place de la Revolution sickened at the frequency of the executions; and the guillotine was ultimately shifted to the suburbs Saint Antoine and Saint Marceau, in order that those quarters might enjoy a sight so dear to a virtuous and republican people. Daily the death-tumbrils rolled through streets crowded with fierce, cruel, haggard faces, fiendish with the frenzy of blind national revenge and characteristic with the hate and the suspicion of a pitiless time. As they emerged from the prisons to enter the death carts, the victims were met by the public insulters, male and female, who accompanied them throughout that long journey of agony with brutal jibes and taunts and execrations, which only ceased as the critical tricoteuses watched gleefully the rapid falling of Sanson's fatal axe.

In the city of terror the accursed Mouton pursued his trade of informer and of denouncer of aristocrats. In the prisons the same creature, disguised as a prisoner, acted as spy, and detected real or denounced pretended plots in the prison. Neither age nor sex, nor infancy, nor innocence escaped accusation, and accusation meant almost certain death. Some suffered for being rich, others for being poor; one died for an

opinion, another for his silence; some suffered for not having adored Marat, others for having regretted the Girondins. Life was wholly insecure. In revolutions, as Danton said when he fell before Robespierre, victory remains with the most wicked; and never, since man swayed power on earth, was there a more cruel or more wicked time-short-lived as such wickedness necessarily was-than the month of Prairial, in the year 2 of the French Republic, during the Revolution's awful Reign of Terror.

In the department of the Loire Inférieure, in the country not very many miles from the city of Nantes, the family of De Rougeville had for very many generations inhabited their fine old chateau. The cadets of the house invariably entered the army. The family belonged to that class of the French provincial nobility which lived upon its estates, and was generally beloved in its own neighbourhood. Not far from the De Rougevilles lived the family of the old Counts la Roque, and the two houses had long lived upon a footing of intimacy which had been cemented by intermarriage. During the sadness and the terror of the revolution, Victor de Rougeville, the heir of his house, married Lucile, the only daughter of the Count la Roque. Theirs had been a long boy-andgirl love, dating from childhood, and deepening with time. When Lucile's father died, M. de Rougeville hastened to give to the woman he loved, and who was left unprotected, the shelter of his name and home. Lucile was the most beautiful girl in the province, and was ardent, gentle, and pure. The young lovers were tenderly attached, but the troubles which deepened and darkened round the French noblesse did not fail to affect M. and Madame de Rougeville, whose sympathies were naturally with royalty and with their

order, and who had relatives and friends in the camp of the emigration. They continued to live upon their estate until the arrival in Nantes of Representative Carrier, with his "Company of Marat," and his portable guillotine, in 1793. In spite of their local popularity, the De Rougevilles were soon denounced to the butcher Carrier as aristocrats and enemies of the people. Victor, however, received from a friendly hand timely notice of his danger, and he had just time to save the lives of his wife and himself by a precipitate flight in disguise. He was proscribed, and his estates confiscated by Carrier.

It was, however, too dangerous for a couple so ostensibly aristocratic to remain together. The whole country was one spy, and pity for, or fidelity to, aristocrats was rare. With many tears Victor and Lucile separated. He found at first a temporary shelter with a small farmer, who to old feudal loyalty added a strong personal attachment to the descendant of an ancient house; but Victor dared not remain long in the neighbourhood of Nantes, and was soon compelled to fly, after a narrow escape from detection and arrest. The whole air was tainted with suspicion, and every footfall was a step taken in danger. Under various disguises, M. de Rougeville frequently changed his place of residence. Sometimes he met with sympathy and shelter, but his life was lonely, harassed, and hunted. Lucile succeeded in reaching Paris, and there found a refuge amongst friends and connections of the aristocratic colony of the Faubourg St Germain. While there, she gave birth to a daughter, who, however, lived but a few hours. M. de Rougeville did not dare to come to Paris. Apart from his own risk, he feared to increase the danger of detection for his wife. Correspondence between them was

hazardous and uncertain. It had to be carried on under feigned names, and their letters were carefully worded to avoid suspicion; but still husband and wife did manage to communicate with each other, though rarely and at long intervals, and Victor was hiding in Rouen when he received the news of the birth and death of his first child, and heard of the illness, and then of the recovery, of the dear wife from whom he was separated so hopelessly and sadly. It was a terrible time of suspense and sorrow. Each weary day broke in doubt and dragged on in danger. Detection and denunciation might come at any moment, and an aristocrat in the "Terror" lived and moved with life attended ever by the spectres of the dungeon and the guillotine.

In one dreadful night the whole Royalist colony of the Faubourg St Germain, comprising three hundred families, was seized, and its members were distributed among the eighteen prisons of Paris. Once more Madame de Rougeville escaped. A poor woman, to whom the kindly lady had shown some kindness, succeeded in hiding her benefactress until the search was over. Madame de Rougeville then found an asylum in that obscure quarter of Paris which is shaded by the towers of St Sulpice. There, in the Rue Servandoni, a poor widow, one Madame Vernet, gladly sheltered the unfortunate. But Madame de Rougeville was still in danger. Her beauty and fine manners marked her unmistakably as aristocrat. She seldom went out. Living in an attic, the gentle lady descended to take her repast, as a guest, at the table of her hostess. Unfortunately, a Montagnard, a member of the Convention, whom Madame Vernet dared not refuse as a lodger, came to live in the house. At first he was discreet and generous. Whatever he might