hem born in the chateau, were
sent adrift, and a new and very different class succeeded them. All was
changed: even the little path that led up from the presbytere to the
chateau, and along which the old cure was seen wending his way on each
Sunday to his dinner with the seigneur, was now closed, the gate walled
up; while the Sabbath itself was only dedicated to greater festivities
and excess, to the scandal of the villagers.

"Meanwhile the children grew up in strength and beauty; like wild
flowers, they had no nurture, but they flourished in all this neglect,
ignorant and unconscious of the scenes around them. They roved about
the livelong day through the meadows, or that wilderness of a garden on
which no longer any care was bestowed, and where rank luxuriance gave
a beauty of its own to the rich vegetation. With the unsuspecting
freshness of their youth, they enjoyed the present without a thought of
the future,--they loved each other, and were happy.

"To them the vague reports and swelling waves of the Revolution, which
each day gained ground, brought neither fear nor apprehension; they
little dreamed that the violence of political strife could ever reach
their quiet valleys. Nor did they think the hour was near when the tramp
of soldiery and the ruffianly shout of predatory war were to replace the
song of the vigneron and the dance of the villager.

"The Revolution came at last, sweeping like a torrent over the land. It
blasted as it went; beneath its baneful breath everything withered and
wasted; loyalty, religion, affection, and brotherly love, all died out
in the devoted country; anarchy and bloodshed were masters of the scene.
The first dreadful act of this fearful drama passed like a dream to
those who, at a distance from Paris, only read of the atrocities of that
wretched capital; but when the wave rolled nearer; when crowds of armed
men, wild and savage in look, with ragged uniforms and bloodstained
hands, prowled about the villages where in happier times a soldier had
never been seen; when the mob around the guillotine supplied the place
of the gathering at the market; when the pavement was wet and slippery
with human blood,--men's natures suddenly became changed, as though some
terrible curse from on high had fallen on them. Their minds caught up
the fearful contagion of revolt, and a mad impulse to deny all they had
once held sacred and venerable seized on all. Their blasphemies against
religion went h