the royal apartments; the deadly
illness of Germain at the Hotel-Dieu Hospital, whither some National
Guards had taken him; the pauper bed and gown in which the Sisters of
the Hospital kept him hidden from the roused populace who searched the
wards for him; her own assumption of the humble dress of a servitor to
nurse him; his pretended death and burial by substitute; his long
delirium, her joy at his return to life; his gratitude and
convalescence; the forced dispersal of the Sisters, and with it her
removal of her charge to the half-deserted Hotel de Poix; the mob
sacking mansion after mansion around them and their inexplicable
exemption; an anonymous warning at length to flee, and the subterfuges
of Dominique to cover their removal to the present house.

She thought also of the faithfulness of Germain to the King throughout
his misfortunes, and how in order to be ready for service in case of a
royalist opportunity, he had refused even her own entreaties to flee.

And sewing on and looking with habitual apprehension down the street,
she thought of the blanks in the old circle--sadly, but without tears,
for she had grown beyond tears over memories, so often had she been
called to shed them for events.

With sorrowful recollection she saw again her good friend, Helene de
Merecourt, and her own sister Jeanne, disappear out of life.

There was that terrible day when the King was beheaded, and that other
when the Queen followed him; Bellecour, d'Amoreau, the Canoness,
Vaudreuil, the Guiches, the Polignacs, were in exile. Others were
concealed, scattered, outlawed, some perhaps included in the massacres;
some perhaps lost among the immense number crowded into the seventy
prisons of the City. When would _her_ turn arrive? When Germain's?

A distant sound made her lips part in alarm. It was the too well-known
surging murmur of a mob approaching. She hastily rose and closed the
window. The Rue Honore was one of the highways particularly exposed to
persecution, for its chief portion was lined with mansions where dwelt
many of the "aristocrats." The great _porte cochere_ and street wall of
one were in full view of her window, coated with insulting placards and
painted in huge letters, "NATIONAL PROPERTY--Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity." How far the property had become national may be inferred
from the fact that the patriot commissioner who took its chattels into
his charge, and whose name was signed with a mark at the bottom