t. Antoine, and commanding a direct view of the Place de la
Bastille, with its esplanade, drawbridge, and principal entrance, a
group was collected at one of the windows, nearly overlooking the gate
itself, which seemed to take the liveliest interest in the proceedings
of the day, although that interest was entirely unmixed with any thing
like the brutal expectation, and morbid love of horrible excitement
which characterized the temper of the multitude.

The most prominent person of this group was a singularly noble-looking
man, fast verging to his fiftieth year, if he had not yet attained it.
His countenance, though resolute and firm, with a clear, piercing eye,
lighted up at times, for a moment, by a quick, fiery flash, was calm,
benevolent, and pensive in its ordinary mood, rather than energetical
or active. Yet it was easy to perceive that the mind, which informed
it, was of the highest capacity both of intellect and imagination.

The figure and carriage of this gentleman would have sufficiently
indicated that, at some period of his life, he had borne arms and led
the life of a camp--which, indeed, at that day was only to say that he
was a nobleman of France--but a long scar on his right brow, a little
way above the eye, losing itself among the thick locks of his fine
waving hair, and a small round cicatrix in the centre of his cheek,
showing where a pistol ball had found entrance, proved that he had
been where blows were falling thickest, and that he had not spared his
own person in the _melee_.

His dress was very rich, according to the fashion of the day, though
perhaps a fastidious eye might have objected that it partook somewhat
of the past mode of the Regency, which had just been brought to a
conclusion as my tale commences, by the resignation of the witty and
licentious Philip of Orleans.

If, however, this fine-looking gentleman was the most prominent, he
certainly was not the most interesting person of the company, which
consisted, beside himself, of an ecclesiastic of high rank in the
French church, a lady, now somewhat advanced in years, but showing the
remains of beauty which, in its prime, must have been extraordinary,
and of a boy in his fifteenth or sixteenth year.

For notwithstanding the eminent distinction, and high intellect of the
elder nobleman, the dignity of the abbe, not unsupported by all which
men look for as the outward and visible signs of that dignity, and the
grace and beauty of th