t that she
had anything to fear from his resentment. His manners and opinions
changed suddenly with the times; the mask of religion was thrown off; and
now, instead of objecting to Sister Frances as not being sufficiently
strict and orthodox in her tenets, he boldly declared that a nun was not
a fit person to be intrusted with the education of any of the young
citizens--they should all be _des eleves de la patrie_. The abbe, become
a member of the Committee of Public Safety, denounced Madame de Fleury,
in the strange jargon of the day, as "_the fosterer of a swarm of bad
citizens, who were nourished in the anticivic prejudices_ de l'ancien
regime, _and fostered in the most detestable superstitions, in defiance
of the law_." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe
that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and
abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. Of their having rejoiced at it in a
most indecent manner, he said he could produce irrefragable proof. The
boy who saw Babet tear down the placard was produced and solemnly
examined; and the thoughtless action of this poor little girl was
construed into a state crime of the most horrible nature. In a
declamatory tone, Tracassier reminded his fellow-citizens, that in the
ancient Grecian times of virtuous republicanism (times of which France
ought to show herself emulous), an Athenian child was condemned to death
for having made a plaything of a fragment of the gilding that had fallen
from a public statue. The orator, for the reward of his eloquence,
obtained an order to seize everything in Madame de Fleury's school-house,
and to throw the nun into prison.

CHAPTER IX

"Who now will guard bewildered youth
Safe from the fierce assault of hostile rage?--
Such war can Virtue wage?"

At the very moment when this order was going to be put in execution,
Madame de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to
Babet, who was reading AEsop's fable of _The old man and his sons_.
Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from
the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister
Frances' desire, to let her companions try if they could break the
bundle, when the attention to the moral of the fable was interrupted by
the entrance of an old woman, whose countenance expressed the utmost
terror and haste, to tell what she had not breath to utter. To Madame de
Fleury she wa