er lands the estate belonging to Governor Hutchinson, lying on
Tremont Street, between West and Boylston Streets.

His large speculations, however, caused him to become deeply involved in
debt. In 1787, accordingly, he started out anew to make a fortune, and
through the influence of Lafayette and other men of prominence in Paris,
he secured many government contracts which entailed immense profit.
Through all the dark days of the French Revolution, he tried to serve
the cause of the proscribed French nobility by perfecting plans for them
to colonise on his lands in America. A large number he induced to
immigrate, and a vast quantity of the furniture and belongings of these
unfortunates was received on board his ships. But before the owners
could follow their furniture, the axe had fallen upon their heads.

When the Reign of Terror was at its height, the _Sally_, owned by
Colonel Swan, and commanded by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wiscasset,
Maine, came home with a strange cargo and a stranger story. The cargo
consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests,
rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for
a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of
a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the
sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wiscasset of the
captain's wife until she could be transferred to a safer retreat.

However true may be the rumour of a plot to bring Marie Antoinette to
America, it is certain that the furniture brought on the _Sally_, was of
exceptional value and beauty. It found its resting-place in the old Swan
house of our picture, to which it gave for many years the name of the
Marie Antoinette house. One room was even called the Marie Antoinette
room, and the bedstead of this apartment, which is to-day in the
possession of the descendants of Colonel Swan, is still known as the
Marie Antoinette bedstead. Whether the unhappy queen ever really rested
on this bed cannot, of course, be said, but tradition has it that it was
designed for her use in America because she had found it comfortable in
France.

Colonel Swan, having paid all his debts, returned in 1795 to the United
States, accompanied by the beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was
his wife, and who had been with her husband in Paris during the Terror.
They brought with them on this occasion a very large collection of fine
French fu