hool.

In 1775, finding that some of the workmen at Tour-la-ville had been
seduced from their duty by a glassmaker at La Fere-en-Tardenois, M.
Deslandes called upon the Intendant at Soissons to clap them into
prison. Turgot, the friend of Franklin, objected to this, but M.
Deslandes gave him plainly to understand that 'a government which should
tolerate such misconduct would be detestable.'

When a great mirror was to be cast at St.-Gobain, M. Deslandes always
took command of the works in full dress, his peruke well powdered and
his sword by his side. Clearly such a director as this was out of
keeping with a king who would not let his officers fire upon a howling
mob, and who put on a red cap to oblige a swarm of drunken ruffians.

M. Deslandes was followed into retirement by several of the
administrators of the company, who emigrated, and in 1793 the Republic
caused the cashier of the company, M. Guerin, to be guillotined on the
heinous charge of corresponding with his former employers and friends
beyond the frontier. Naturally this crime was committed, like so many
similar crimes of that day, with an eye to the main chance. The shares
of the administrators who had emigrated were confiscated, in the names
of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and the confiscators sent sundry
'patriots' to sit on the administrative council of the company. Their
incompetency was so ludicrous and mischievous that Robespierre,
representing the State which had thus stolen an interest in the
enterprise, could not stand it. He actually 'requisitioned' two
noblemen--two 'aristocrats'--among the as yet undisturbed owners of the
property, to come forward and direct it, just as the leader of a
successful mutiny of convicts on board of a transport might
'requisition' the deposed captain and mate of the vessel to carry her
safely through a storm!

With the return of law and order in the person of the Corsican conqueror
things resumed their normal course at St.-Gobain; and as I have already
said, the company flourished under its old organisation down to the
establishment of the Monarchy of July. Then the owners of the 'deniers'
put themselves and their property under the general Civil Code, in the
form of what is called in modern France a 'societe anonyme,' and at the
first general meeting of the 'societe' in April 1831 the accounts of 128
years, over which no question had ever arisen among the representatives
of the original holders, were presented