here is
not the slightest possibility that any one of us will escape, we have
the better opportunity of showing our original _bienseance_. All the
struggling on earth will not save us from the guillotine; and
therefore we resolve to accommodate each other for the rest of our
journey."

I agreed with him on the philosophy of the case, and in return he
introduced me to some of the Vendean nobles, who had hitherto
exhibited their general scorn of Parisian contact by confining
themselves to the circle of their followers. I was received with the
distinction due to my introducer, and was invited to join their supper
that night. The prison had once been the chapel of the convent; and
though the desecration had taken place a hundred years before, and the
revolutionary spoil had spared but little of the remaining ornaments,
the original massiveness of the building, and the nobleness of the
architecture, had withstood the assaults of both time and plunder. The
roofs of the aisles could not be reached except by flame, and the
monuments of the ancient priors and prelates, when they had once been
stripped of their crosses, were too solid for the passing fury of the
mob. And thus, in the midst of emblems of mortality, and the
recollections of old solemnity, were set some hundreds of people, who
knew as little of each other as if they had met in a caravansery, and
who, perhaps, expected to part as soon. The scene was curious, but by
no means uncheerful. The national spirit is inextinguishable; and,
however my countrymen may bear up against the extremes of ill-fortune,
no man meets its beginnings with so easy an air as the man of France.
Our supper was laid out in one of the side chapels; and, coarse and
scanty as it was, I seldom recollect an evening which I passed with a
lighter sense of the burden of a prisoner's time. I found the Vendean
nobles a manlier race than their more courtly countrymen. Yet they had
courtliness of their own; but it was more the manner of our own
country gentlemen of the last century, than the polish of Versailles.
Their habits of living on their domains, of country sports, of
intercourse with their peasantry, and of the general simplicity of
country life, had drawn a strong line of distinction between them and
the dukes and marquises of the royal saloons. Like all Frenchmen of
the day, they conversed largely upon the politics of France; but there
was a striking reserve in their style. The existing royal fa