flight
to Varennes--fell by the guillotine the week after the king's trial;
the countess was executed on the same scaffold as her husband. I was the
priest who accompanied her at the moment; and in my arms she placed her
only child,--an infant boy of two years. There was a cry among the crowd
to have the child executed also, and many called out that the spawn
would be a serpent one day, and it were better to crush it while it was
time; but the little fellow was so handsome, and looked so winningly
around him on the armed ranks and the glancing weapons, that even
_their_ cruel hearts relented, and he was spared. It is to me like
yesterday, as I remember every minute circumstance; I can recall even
the very faces of that troubled and excited assemblage, that at one
moment screamed aloud for blood, and at the next were convulsed with
savage laughter.

"As I forced my way through the dense array, a rude arm was stretched
out from the mass, and a finger dripping with the gore of the scaffold
was drawn across the boy's face, while a ruffian voice exclaimed, 'The
Meringues were ever proud of their blood; let us see if it be redder
than other people's.' The child laughed; and the mob, with horrid
mockery, laughed too.

"I took him home with me to my _presbytere_ at Sevres,--for that was my
parish,--and we lived together in peace until the terrible decree was
issued which proclaimed all France atheist. Then we wandered southwards,
towards that good land which, through every vicissitude, was true to its
faith and its king,--La Vendee. At Lyons we were met by a party of the
revolutionary soldiers, who, with a commissary of the Government, were
engaged in raising young men for the conscription. Alphonse, who was
twelve years old, felt all a boy's enthusiasm at the warlike display
before him, and persuaded me to follow the crowd into the _Place des
Terreaux_, where the numbers were read out.

"'Paul Ducos,' cried a voice aloud, as we approached the stage on which
the commissary and his staff were standing; 'where is this Paul Ducos?'

"'I am here,' replied a fine, frank-looking youth, of some fifteen
years; 'but my father is blind, and I cannot leave him.'

"'We shall soon see that,' called out the commissary. 'Clerk, read out
his _signalement_.'

"'Paul Ducos, son of Eugene Ducos, formerly calling himself Count Ducos
de la Breche--'

"'Down with the Royalists! _a bas_ the tyrants!' screamed the mob, not
suffering the rema