rom the theme; in vain her niece endeavoured to suggest
another topic, or convey a hint that the subject might be unpleasing
to me. It was the old lady's one absorbing idea, and she could not
relinquish it. Whole volumes of the atrocities perpetrated by the
revolutionary soldiery came to her recollection; each moment as she
talked, memory would recall this fact or the other, and so she continued
rattling on with the fervour of a heated imagination, and the wild
impetuosity of a half-crazed intellect. As for myself, I suffered far
more from witnessing the pain others felt for me, than from any offence
the topic occasioned me directly. These events were all 'before my
time.' I was neither a Blue by birth nor by adoption; a child during the
period of revolution, I had only taken a man's part when the country,
emerging from its term of anarchy and blood, stood at bay against the
whole of Europe. These consolations were, however, not known to the
others, and it was at last, in a moment of unendurable agony, that
mademoiselle rose and left the room.

The general's eyes followed her as she went, and then sought mine with
an expression full of deep meaning. If I read his look aright, it
spoke patience and submission; and the lesson was an easier one than he
thought.

'They talk of heroism,' cried she frantically--'it was massacre!
And when they speak of chivalry they mean the slaughter of women and
children!' She looked round, and seeing that her niece had left the
room, suddenly dropped her voice to a whisper, and said, 'Think of her
mother's fate, dragged from her home, her widowed, desolate home, and
thrown into the Temple, outraged and insulted, condemned on a mock
trial, and then carried away to the guillotine! Ay, and even then, on
that spot which coming death might have sanctified, in that moment when
even fiendish vengeance can turn away and leave its victim at liberty
to utter a last prayer in peace, even then, these wretches devised an
anguish greater than all death could compass. You will scarcely believe
me,' said she, drawing in her breath, and talking with an almost
convulsive effort, 'you will scarcely believe me in what I am now about
to tell you, but it is the truth--the simple but horrible truth. When my
sister mounted the scaffold there was no priest to administer the last
rites. It was a time, indeed, when few were left; their hallowed heads
had fallen in thousands before that. She waited for a few minutes,