"Tonnerre de Ciel! mademoiselle," said he, "or shall I rather say Citoyenne Eulalie?—be calm, and listen to a friend."
"Friend!" I reiterated with a scornful shudder.
M. Rouvigny smiled coldly.
He then proceeded to say how long he had loved me; that he would cast himself and his power (he had succeeded my poor father in his civil and military authority) at my feet; but I turned from him with the aversion he merited. The scar on his brow grew black with rage—his cheeks crimsoned and his eyes glared; I was terrified—yea, fascinated by fear, even as when yonder horrid reptile reared its head at me this evening.
Alas! I had not the courage of Charlotte Corday, or others who, like her, shall live in history.
To be brief, I felt myself too young, too unprepared, too fond of life and full of hope for the future, to die yet; and to be spared the horror of a public assassination——"
She paused.
"You consented to marry this villain," said I, with a tone almost of pique, "this Thibaud Rouvigny?"
"I did." (She shuddered like one in an ague.) "What mercy could I expect from Rouvigny? 'Twas his brother who clove with a hatchet the head of the helpless, innocent, and lovely Princess de Lamballe, and who held it aloft on a pike, with her beautiful golden hair waving around the bloody staff, as he thrust it against the barred window of that chamber in which Marie Antoinette was seated with the captive Louis, in the Tower of the Temple. His family were all in the sections of Paris. Mon Dieu! they were a generation of tigers!
"To satisfy my scruples, the curé of the Ursuline chapel at St. Pierre performed the burlesque of a marriage ceremony in secret, for all religion is abolished in the colonies as in France, and thus sanctified, to save my miserable life, I became the bride—the victim of Rouvigny——"