robbers and other dangers with which the place abounded.
But Mary persisted in going alone; and when, evening after evening, she
returned unharmed, it must have seemed to him as if she bore a charmed
life. Such incidents as these show, better than volumes of praise, the
true kindliness of her nature which was not influenced by distinctions of
rank.

Those who knew her but by name, however, dealt with her in less gentle
fashion. Her fame had been carried even into Pembroke; and while she was
living her solitary and inoffensive life in Paris, Mrs. Bishop was
writing to Everina: "The conversation [at Upton Castle] turns on Murphy,
on Irish potatoes, or Tommy Paine, whose effigy they burnt at Pembroke
the other day. Nay, they talk of immortalizing Miss Wollstonecraft in
like manner, but all end in damning all politics: What good will they do
men? and what rights have men that three meals a day will not supply?"
After all, perhaps they were wise, these Welshmen. Were not their
brethren in France purchasing their rights literally at the price of
their three meals a day?

Sometimes, perhaps to please her friend, the gardener, instead of her
rambles through the woods, Mary walked towards and even into Paris, and
then she saw sights which made Pembroke logic seem true wisdom, and
freedom a farce. Once, in so doing, she passed by chance a place of
execution, just at the close of one of its too frequent tragic scenes.
The blood was still fresh upon the pavement; the crowd of lookers-on not
yet dispersed. She heard them as they stood there rehearsing the day's
horror, and she chafed against the cruelty and inhumanity of the deed. In
a moment--her French so improved that she could make herself
understood--she was telling the people near her something of what she
thought of their new tyrants. Those were dangerous times for freedom of
speech. So far the champions of liberty had proved themselves more
inexorable masters than the Bourbons. Some of the bystanders, who, though
they dared not speak their minds, sympathized with Mary's indignation,
warned her of her danger and hurried her away from the spot. Horror at
the ferocity of men's passions, wrath at injustices committed in the name
of freedom, and impatience at her own helplessness to right the evils by
which she was surrounded, no doubt inspired her, as saddened and sobered
she walked back alone to Neuilly.

During all this time she continued her literary work. She proposed to