e child,
conveyed an impression of tempered decision and mildness that was most
fascinating; the character of her features was thoughtful, and were
it not for a certain vivacity in the eyes, would have been even sad.
Forgive me, if I dwell--when I need not--on these traits: she is no
more. Her father carried her with him in his exile, and your lowering
skies and gloomy air soon laid her low.

"Annette was the child of Royalist parents. Both her father and mother
had occupied places in the royal household; and she was accustomed from
her earliest infancy to hear the praise of the Bourbons from lips which
trembled when they spoke. Poor child! how well do I remember her
little prayer for the martyred saint,--for so they styled the murdered
king,--which she never missed saying each morning when the mass was over
in the chapel of the chateau. It is a curious fact that the girls of a
family were frequently attached to the fortunes of the Bourbons, while
the boys declared for the Revolution; and these differences penetrated
into the very core, and sapped the happiness of many whose affection had
stood the test of every misfortune save the uprooting torrent of anarchy
that poured in with the Revolution. These party differences entered
into all the little quarrels of the schoolroom and the nursery; and the
taunting epithets of either side were used in angry passion by those who
neither guessed nor could understand their meaning. Need it be
wondered at, if in after life these opinions took the tone of intense
convictions, when even thus in infancy they were nurtured and fostered?
Our little circle at Le Luc was, indeed, wonderfully free from such
causes of contention; whatever paths in life fate had in store for us
afterwards, then, at least, we were of one mind. A few of the boys,
it is true, were struck by the successes of those great armies the
Revolution poured over Europe; but even they were half ashamed to
confess enthusiasm in a cause so constantly allied in their memory with
everything mean and low-lived.

"Such, in a few words, was the little party assembled around the
supper-table of the chateau, on one lovely evening in June. The windows,
opening to the ground, let in the perfumed air from many a sweet and
flowery shrub without; while already the nightingale had begun her lay
in the deep grove hard by. The evening was so calm we could hear the
plash of the making tide upon the shore, and the minute peals of the
waves