"Lord, how singular—I thought misfortune soured a man."
"Weak men, yes."
"But if I were to meet misfortune and it was to make me wicked?"
"You may meet misfortune but you will never become wicked. I answer for that."
"Then," sighed Billet, "I shall stay and see the game out. But I shall show the white feather more than once, like this."
"But I shall be at hand to uphold you."
"So be it," said the farmer. Throwing a lazy look on Viscount Charny's body, which servants came to remove, he said: "What a vastly pretty boy he was, with his laughing eye, when he rode along on his little grey with the basket and the purse—poor little master Charny!"
Poor Billet! he had not the mesmerist's prophetic soul, and he could not dream what events we have to trace, now that the King and Queen have started to Paris to follow the road marked by the Revolution's redhot plowshare; now that Charny begins to see what a winsome and noble wife he has; now that our minor characters are standing out; now that poor Ange Pitou, quitting Paris with regret is going to play a grand part in the drama of his own country—our romance is but well on the way. We shall meet our dear old friends and alas! we shall fight our stubborn old enemies in the pages of the continuation to this book, under the title of "The Hero of the People."
THE END.