It was better too, surely, than what befell so many others of those who escaped the Terror; better than to have to drag out year after year a pitiful existence as an émigré in London, in squalid lodgings in Somers Town, driven, poor fellows, to earn a wretched and precarious livelihood by teaching French for a few pence a lesson, or as dancing-masters, and then after it all be put away in a cheap grave in the grimy soil of St. Pancras old churchyard. It was better than that. Vive la Gloire! Vixerunt. Each one has had his day—
And somewhere, 'mid the distant stars,
He knows, mayhap, what glory is.
CLOCK-FACE FROM THE VILLE DE PARIS
Now in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall. The clock-face was set up at the break of the poop, above the quarter-deck. It was the duty of a sentry to move the hands on every hour.
The ships were worthy of the men. The pick of the French fleet was with De Grasse—one ship of a hundred and four guns, five of eighty-four, three eighties, nineteen seventy-fours, six sixty-fours—thirty-four sail of the line altogether, besides sixteen frigates. A fine show they made with their yellow sides, belted with black at the water-line, and dark blue bulwarks, with red ports, gilded figure-heads and balustraded galleries, and gleaming brass Gribeauval guns, the newest type of ordnance from the foundries of Indret and La Ruelle. The magnificent Ville de Paris, 'leviathan of ships,' was De Grasse's flagship, the finest and largest first-rate in the world, the splendid present offered by the citizens of Paris to the King at the close of the Seven Years' War, as their contribution towards making good the losses that France had suffered in the war. Four and a half million livres she was said to have cost, nearly four times the price of the British Royal George or the Victory. Seven others of the fifteen powerful men-of-war that the provinces and corporations of France, following the example of the capital, then offered to the State, were at Fort Royal, on which no money nor pains had been spared to make them equal in efficiency to the finest ships afloat.
BELL OF THE VILLE DE PARIS
Now in the Museum of the Royal United Service Institution, Whitehall.