me de Fleury started back with
horror--her guards burst into an inhuman laugh, and asked whether her
curiosity was satisfied. She would have left the room; but it was now
their pleasure to detain her, and to force her to continue the whole day
in this apartment. When the guillotine began its work, they had even the
barbarity to drag her to the window, repeating, "It is there you ought to
be!--It is there your husband ought to be!--You are too happy, that your
husband is not there this moment. But he will be there--the law will
overtake him--he will be there in time--and you too!"

The mild fortitude of this innocent, benevolent woman made no impression
upon these cruel men. When at night they saw her kneeling at her
prayers, they taunted her with gross and impious mockery; and when she
sank to sleep, they would waken her by their loud and drunken orgies--if
she remonstrated, they answered, "The enemies of the constitution should
have no rest."

Madame de Fleury was not an enemy to any human being; she had never
interfered in politics; her life had been passed in domestic pleasures,
or employed for the good of her fellow-creatures. Even in this hour of
personal danger she thought of others more than of herself: she thought
of her husband, an exile in a foreign country, who might be reduced to
the utmost distress now that she was deprived of all means of remitting
him money. She thought of her friends, who, she knew, would exert
themselves to obtain her liberty, and whose zeal in her cause might
involve them and their families in distress. She thought of the good
Sister Frances, who had been exposed by her means to the unrelenting
persecution of the malignant and powerful Tracassier. She thought of her
poor little pupils, now thrown upon the world without a protector. Whilst
these ideas were revolving in her mind one night as she lay awake, she
heard the door of her chamber open softly, and a soldier, one of her
guards, with a light in his hand, entered; he came to the foot of her
bed, and, as she started up, laid his finger upon his lips.

"Don't make the least noise," said he in a whisper; "those without are
drunk, and asleep. Don't you know me?--don't you remember my face?"

"Not in the least; yet I have some recollection of your voice."

The man took off the bonnet-rouge--still she could not guess who he was.
"You never saw me in a uniform before nor without a black face."

She looked again, and recolle