going
on around them, wrote strongly against the abuse of power by the nobles
and the King, teaching that kings were but the servants of the people.
The poor, ignorant, downtrodden peasantry, urged by the selfish trading
classes who used them for their own ends, united in a great movement to
take away the privileges of the nobles. The serfs flung off the heavy
yoke, and went to the worst excesses, burning and wrecking the palaces
of their former masters, utterly ruining them and driving them out of
the country.

The Commons, or National Assembly as they styled themselves, did not
stop when they had introduced reforms that were really needed, but did
just as their passion against the aristocrats and the rich dictated.
Things passed from bad to worse when the King, who had the right of
refusing the proposals of the National Assembly, exercised his right and
vetoed (from _veto_, I forbid) two of their decrees. This made the
people furious. All this was new to Garth Mainwaring, as also was the
procession of noisy people, marching through the streets to the beating
of drums, carrying banners, and howling and shouting at any well-dressed
people they met. Garth saw the mob battering at the doors of the King's
palace, calling for his Majesty to come out, and when the King, in quiet
dignity, stood before them, they ordered him to put on the red cap of
liberty, and grossly insulted him and his beautiful Queen and their
children.

Garth had felt his blood leap up as he witnessed this, and in his young
enthusiasm he longed to fight on the side of the royal prisoner and his
nobles. On the evening of one dreadful day, during which the mob had
done wild things, as Garth was passing on towards the Rue Saint Honore,
he heard a faint voice on his left hand. It came from the figure of a
man huddled in a doorway, who had been mortally wounded and was rapidly
dying.

'Sir,' gasped the man, in English, 'Sir, save my daughter. Go to her,
sir, and give her her father's dying blessing.'

'I will go, sir,' said Garth. 'Will you tell me your name?'

'The Baron de Mericourt. I was in the palace. I got away as by a miracle,
but I fell among the ruffians here, and they have done for me. Waste no
more time, I implore you. Save my darling Lucile, and tell her her
father----' But here, with one more gasp, he died.

Another striking adventure befell our hero at Nantes. It was after he
had offered to throw in his lot with Bonchamps, a leader of th