There was slaughter in the streets of Paris! Revolution,—not the revolution of a shackled and indignant people rising to assert their rights,—but of a wild mob,
“The scum
That rises upmost when a nation boils,”
stalked in the palaces of the mighty, desecrating their ancestral domes, and treading down with demoniac fury the trophied honors of their sires. Faction—lawless and unprincipled faction—usurped the tribunals of justice—its acts were the dethronement of kings, ratified in the blood of princes. The headless trunk of the Bourbon was cast beneath the feet of his people in their fury, and to weep for him was to share his fate! The regal Antoinette too—the fairest, yet alas! the most hapless of the daughters of Lorraine—was dragged to the accursed block, and in rapid succession her chivalrous defenders kissed the guillotine, reeking with the blood of their sovereigns. The fell tiger Anarchy, was abroad in Gallia, and his fangs rent asunder the life-strings of all who owned not his sway, while the wild shouts that ushered in the blood-washed republic was mingled with the wail of France for her slaughtered and dishonored chivalry.
Marmonti witnessed the decapitation of his royal relative, and heard from his cell the cry that told the murder of the queen. A blank of a few days ensued—he was dragged from his dungeon—a dash in the records of the criminal tribunal, and all that remained of Frederick, Duke of Marmonti, was his lifeless and mangled corpse. Did the wife of Marmonti share the grave of her lord?
Seated in the oriel of an apartment in the Palais du Ministéres des Affaires des Etrangéres, was a lady clothed in a suit of sables. The year was in its decline, and the melancholy aspect of the external world served to deepen the gloom that sat throned upon the features of the mourner. Ever and anon the hoarse roar of the multitude in the adjacent place swept into the room, as some popular leader vented his oratory; or from the Boulevard below the window, there would ascend the voices of the patriotic artizans, as they repeated in stunning chorus,
“Aux armes citoyens, formons nos battaillons
Marchons; qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!”
She shuddered as these sounds broke upon her ear, and when from the Place Vendome there darted a thousand artificial meteors, aided in effect by the discharge of artillery, she shrouded her face with her hands and wept convulsively.
The door was thrown open and a visiter announced, but absorbed in grief she heeded not the tidings. The visiter advanced until within a few feet and paused, as if awaiting her attention, but still she noted not his proximity.
“Lady,” murmured the stranger—God of heaven! could it be his voice?—“Duchess of Marmonti, will you not speak to your friend?” Yes, those tones were his; his whom in her girlhood she had such cause to love and honor, whom in her womanhood she had slighted and defamed. And what did he here? Had he heard of her misfortunes, and was his errand to the wretched that he might triumph in her wretchedness? The passions of her race stirred within her as she caught at this opinion, and throwing back the dishevelled ringlets from her care-worn features she raised her flashing eyes to the face of the speaker; but the saddened look and pitying glance that met her gaze, spoke not joy but sorrow for her misery, and again her head was hidden from her companion's view.
“Mary”—and the voice of the speaker was fraught with emotion—“Mary,” and as if that name conjured up old and familiar associations, he seated himself beside her; a tear filled in his eye and dropped upon the hand he pressed within his own. That tear! It opened the floodgates of memory, and told a brother's love. The sufferer saw not in the being before her, the man she had so deeply injured in his richest affections, and leaning her head upon his shoulder, she poured forth her grief, even as she was wont to do in earlier, happier years. Time rolled refluently in its channels, and her companion was once more the Harry of Barnstable and she again Mary Destraix. Cheated by the phantom of happiness the kindly demeanor of Harwood created, she wept the more; but her tears were not wrung from the heart—and when in the outpourings of his sympathy he spoke of her departure from Paris and its associations, and painted with brotherly fervor the comfort and safety that awaited her in his distant home, she raised her eyes beaming with gratitude and essayed to speak, but her emotions were too strong for the cold medium of words, and she could only thank him with her tears.