Of Mme. de Combray’s two daughters the eldest had married, in 1787, at the age of twenty-two, Jacques-Philippe-Henri d’Houel; the youngest Caroline-Madeleine-Louise-Genevieve, was born in 1773, and consequently was only eleven years old when her father died.  This child is the heroine of the drama we are about to relate.

In August, 1791, Mme. de Combray inscribed herself and her two sons on the list of the hostages of Louis XVI which the journalist Durosay had conceived.  It was a courageous act, for it was easy to foresee that the six hundred and eleven names on “this golden book of fidelity,” would soon all be suspected.  While hope remained for the monarchy the two brothers struggled bravely.  Timoleon stayed near the King till August 10, and only went to England after he had taken part in the defence of the Tuileries; Bonnoeil had emigrated the preceding year, and served in the army of the Princes.  Mme. de Combray, left alone with her two daughters—­the husband of the elder had also emigrated,—­left Tournebut in 1793, and settled in Rouen, where, although she owned much real estate in the town, she rented in the Rue de Valasse, Faubourg Bouvreuil, “an isolated, unnumbered house, with an entrance towards the country.”  She gave her desire to finish the education of her younger daughter who was entering her twentieth year as a reason for her retreat.

Caroline de Combray was very small,—­“as large as a dog sitting,” they said,—­but charming; her complexion was delicately pure, her black hair of extraordinary length and abundance.  She was loving and sensible, very romantic, full of frankness and vivacity; the great attraction of her small person was the result of a piquant combination of energy and gentleness.  She had been brought up in the convent of the Nouvelles Catholiques de Caen, where she stayed six years, receiving lessons from “masters of all sorts of accomplishments, and of different languages.”  She was a musician and played the harp, and as soon as they were settled in Rouen her mother engaged Boieldieu as her accompanist, “to whom she long paid six silver francs per lesson,” a sum that seemed fabulous in that period of paper-money, and territorial mandates.

Madame de Combray, besides, was much straightened.  As both her sons had emigrated, all the property that they inherited from their father was sequestrated.  Of the income of 50,000 francs possessed by the family before the Revolution, scarcely fifty remained at her disposal, and she had been obliged to borrow to sustain the heavy expenses of her house in Rouen.

Besides her two daughters and the servants, she housed half a dozen nuns and two or three Chartreux, among them a recusant friar called Lemercier, who soon gained great influence in the household.  By reason of his refractoriness Pere Lemercier was doomed, if discovered, to death, or at least to deportation, and it will be understood that he sympathised but feebly with the Revolution that consigned him, against his will, to martyrdom.  He called down the vengeance of heaven on the miscreants, and not daring to show himself, with unquenchable ardour preached the holy crusade to the women who surrounded him.