deemed it better to emigrate, and wait in a foreign land for the happy
hour of returning to their own,--a circumstance, by the way, which must
have tried their patience ere this; and a few, trusting to their obscure
position, living in out-of-the-way, remote spots, supposed that in
the general uproar they might escape undetected; and, with one or two
exceptions, they were right. Among these latter was an unmarried brother
of my mother, who having held a military command for a great many years
in the Ile de Bourbon, retired to spend the remainder of his days in
a small but beautiful chateau on the seaside, about three leagues
from Marseilles. The old viscount (we continued to call him so among
ourselves, though the use of titles was proscribed long before) had met
with some disappointment in love in early life, which had prevented his
ever marrying, and turned all his affections towards the children of his
brothers and sisters, who invariably passed a couple of months of
each summer with him, arriving from different parts of France for the
purpose.

"And truly it was a strange sight to see the mixture of look,
expression, accent, and costume, that came to the rendezvous: the
long-featured boy, with blue eyes and pointed chin,--cold, wary,
and suspicious, brave but cautious,--that came from Normandy; the
high-spirited, reckless youth from Brittany; the dark-eyed girl of
Provence; the quick-tempered, warm-hearted Gascon and, stranger than
all, from his contrast to the rest the little Parisian, with his airs
of the capital and his contempt for his rustic brethren, nothing daunted
that in all their boyish exercises he found himself so much their
inferior. Our dear old uncle loved nothing so well as to have us around
him; and even the little ones, of five and six years old, when not
living too far off, were brought to these reunions, which were to us the
great events of each year of our lives.

"It was in the June of the year 1794--I shall not easily forget the
date--that we were all assembled as usual at 'Le Luc.' Our party was
reinforced by some three or four new visitors, among whom was a little
girl of about twelve years old,--Annette de Noailles, the prettiest
creature I ever beheld. Every land has its own trait of birth distinctly
marked. I don't know whether you have observed that the brow and the
forehead are more indicative of class in Frenchmen than any other
portion of the face: hers was perfect, and though a mer