parliament of Paris, died
on the very eve of the great troubles, December 1, 1788. He was then in
his sixty-seventh year, and as he had done nothing but good at Pinon,
not only embellishing the chateau and the park, but giving much time and
money to improve the condition of the people, he would probably have
been sent to the guillotine at Paris by the local 'directory at Chauny'
had he lived long enough, and his property confiscated, like the
property of the bishops and dukes at Anizy. His oldest son was a lad of
fifteen when the storm burst in 1789. His mother took his interests
resolutely in hand. She came of two aristocratic stocks, the Millys and
the Clermonts-Tonnerre, but she got the better of the democrats. Like
old Madame Dupin at Chenonceaux, she carried herself and her property,
by woman's wit and woman's will, through the Revolution. In 1791 she
contrived to get her son, then only seventeen, elected commander of the
National Guard at Anizy. He ripened rapidly, under the stress of the
times, bought up the 'patriots' when it was necessary--and there is
abundant evidence to show that they were always in the market, even at
Paris and during the worst times of the Terror--was made a baron of the
empire by Napoleon, elected President of the Canton of Anizy in 1811, a
councillor-general of the Aisne in the same year, and deputy in 1814.
With the Restoration he became once more Vicomte de Courval and seigneur
of Pinon, having long before converted the park and gardens of the
chateau into the 'English style,' with fine watercourses and an
extensive lake, and died quietly at Paris in 1822. In 1794, at the age
of twenty, he married a daughter of the Marquis de Saint-Mars.

His son and successor, Ernest-Alexis Dubois de Courval, was taken
into high favour by Charles X., but was nevertheless made a
councillor-general of the Aisne under Louis Philippe. He married the
only daughter of Moreau, who was a child of nine years old when her
father fell fighting against France and Napoleon in 1813. In a curious
Gothic tower which he built at Pinon are still preserved some of the
standards captured from the enemies of France by Moreau, and these I am
assured are the only such standards, excepting those of the Invalides,
recovered through the efforts of the House of Peers, which existed in
France before the Crimean War. In this tower the Vicomte de Courval
formed a remarkable collection of mediaeval arms and armour, antique
furnitur