”‘No indeed,’ said Madame Delmar. And from that moment Pierre only thought of his childish enemy with profound pity.”
Chapter Eight.
“As a rule, news, even of great importance, travelled very slowly in those days. But not long after the return of Nanette there came to Valmont, as to even far remoter corners of France, with a rush like that of a mighty wind, tidings of the first tremendous outburst of the great storm—the assault and taking of the prison of the Bastille by the infuriated mob. My mother well remembers that day in Paris. The terror which spread through all classes—the strange stories which were afloat about the wretched prisoners released from the dungeons, where some of them had been confined till they had forgotten not only the crime—imaginary in many cases—for which they had been punished, but even their own names and histories! The destruction of the terrible Bastille can never be regretted, but it was accompanied by dreadful deeds. The murder of the governor and other officers who were but doing their duty; for the people, maddened by hunger as well as by their many wrongs, did not stop to consider which were the guilty and which the innocent. I have said to my mother that from this point I wish she would take this narrative into her own hands. It seems to me that as an eye-witness—for in this year 1789, she was an intelligent girl of nearly thirteen—she could describe with much more force and vividness many of the scenes which followed. But she begs me to continue as I have begun. The story concerns my father quite as much as herself, she says, and she wishes it to be written as much from his recollections, which he has often related to me, as from her own. So I must do my best, sadly imperfect though I feel it to be.
“The taking of the Bastille was the signal for outrages through many parts of the country. Châteaux were burnt, convents sacked and destroyed, many even among the superior farmer class, who had had nothing to do with the government or the oppression of the poor, whose only crime was that through their industry and economy they had grown richer than their neighbours, suffered as well as their betters. In Paris itself many of the most conspicuous among the nobility were dragged by the mob from their houses and put to death in a horrible way, by being hanged on the street lamps. These I have always thought much more to be pitied than those later sufferers who perished by the famous guillotine; for this first manner of death united insult to barbarity.
“How it came to pass that my great-uncle, the Marquis de Sarinet, was not among those on whom this first fury was wreaked, my mother has often felt at a loss to explain. It may have been that he had never mixed himself up much with affairs of state—for he was selfish even in this, disliking everything which gave him trouble—and that thus his name was not one of the best known. But his punishment had already begun, for the following winter saw the complete destruction by fire, after it had been robbed of everything of value, of the beautiful old Château of Sarinet.
“News of this was not long in reaching Valmont.
“All through these months many a faithful heart there had ached with anxiety for their Countess and her child. But the disordered state of things was having everywhere a bad effect. Quiet and peaceable folk began to be frightened. Many dared not express any interest in or sympathy with those whose turn it was now to be unjustly and cruelly treated. And among the loose characters who now and then passed through or loitered about our quiet Valmont, there were not wanting some on the look-out for mischief-making.