line qualifications. It was
the thoughtfulness of a worker, not of a dreamer--the thoughtfulness
which prepares, not unfits a man for action.

If the powers portrayed in that boy's countenance were not deceptive
to the last degree, high qualities were within, and a high destiny
before him.

But who, from the foreshowing and the bloom of sixteen years, may
augur of the finish and the fruit of the three-score and ten, which
are the sum of human toil and sorrow?

It was now nearly noon, when the outer drawbridge of the Bastile was
lowered and its gate opened, and forth rode, two a-breast, a troop of
the mousquetaires, or life-guard, in the bright steel casques and
cuirasses, with the musquetoons, from which they derived their name,
unslung and ready for action. As they issued into the wider space
beyond the bridge, the troopers formed themselves rapidly into a sort
of hollow column, the front of which, some eight file deep, occupied
the whole width of the street, two files in close order composing each
flank, and leaving an open space in the centre completely surrounded
by the horsemen.

Into this space, without a moment's delay, there was driven a low
black cart, or hurdle as it was technically called, of the rudest
construction, drawn by four powerful black horses, a savage-faced
official guiding them by the ropes which supplied the place of reins.
On this ill-omened vehicle there stood three persons, the prisoner,
and two of the armed wardens of the Bastile, the former ironed very
heavily, and the latter bristling with offensive weapons.

Immediately in the rear of this car followed another troop of the
life-guard, which closed up in the densest and most serried order
around and behind the victim of the law, so as to render any attempt
at rescue useless.

The person, to secure whose punishment so strong a military force had
been produced, and to witness whose execution so vast a multitude was
collected, was a tall, noble-looking man of forty or forty-five years,
dressed in a rich mourning-habit of the day, but wearing neither hat
nor mantle. His dark hair, mixed at intervals with thin lines of
silver, was cut short behind, contrary to the usage of the times, and
his neck was bare, the collar of his superbly laced shirt being folded
broadly back over the cape of his pourpoint.

His face was very pale, and his complexion being naturally of the
darkest, the hue of his flesh, from which all the healthful blood had