much cost I should
hear it all, and then forever, with God's help, put it away with the
past, as you must try to do. His death was the more sad to me because
all his sympathies were with the party bent on ruining our country. Ah,
Rene, could he have guessed that he who had such hopeful belief in what
those changes would effect should die by the hand of a Jacobin mob! I
wish now to hear the whole story."

"All of it, mother?" He was deeply troubled.

"Yes, all--all without reserve."

She sat back in her chair, gazing up the darkening river, her hands
lying supine on her knees. "Go on, my son, and do not make me question
you."

"Yes, mother." There were things he had been glad to forget and some he
had set himself never to forget. He knew, however, that now, on the
whole, it was better to be frank. He sat still, thinking how best he
could answer her. Understanding the reluctance his silence expressed,
she said, "You will, Rene?"

"Yes, dear mother"; and so on the deck at fall of night, in an alien
land, the young man told his story of one of the first of the minor
tragedies which, as a Jacobin said, were useless except to give a good
appetite for blood.

It was hard to begin. He had in perfection the memory of things seen,
the visualizing capacity. He waited, thinking how to spare her that
which at her summons was before him in all the distinctness of an hour
of unequaled anguish.

She felt for him and knew the pain she was giving, comprehending him
with a fullness rare to the mother mind. "This is not a time to spare
me," she said, "nor yourself. Go on." She spoke sternly, not turning her
head, but staring up the long stretch of solitary water.

"It shall be as you wish," he returned slowly. "In September of last
year you were in Paris with our cousin, La Rochefoucauld, about our
desperate money straits, when the assembly decreed the seizure of
Avignon from the Pope's vice-legate. This news seemed to make possible
the recovery of rents due us in that city. My father thought it well for
me to go with him--"

"Yes, yes, I know; but go on."

"We found the town in confusion. The Swiss guard of the vice-legate had
gone. A leader of the Jacobin party, Lescuyer, had been murdered that
morning before the altar of the Church of the Cordeliers. That was on
the day we rode in. Of a sudden we were caught in a mob of peasants near
the gate. A Jacobin, Jourdan, led them, and had collected under guard
dozens of scared bo