CHAPTER X

   “Alas! full oft on Guilt’s victorious car
   The spoils of Virtue are in triumph borne,
   While the fair captive, marked with many a scar,
   In lone obscurity, oppressed, forlorn,
   Resigns to tears her angel form.”—­BEATTIE.

A close prisoner in her own house, Madame de Fleury was now guarded by men suddenly become soldiers, and sprung from the dregs of the people; men of brutal manners, ferocious countenances, and more ferocious minds.  They seemed to delight in the insolent display of their newly-acquired power.  One of those men had formerly been convicted of some horrible crime, and had been sent to the galleys by M. de Fleury.  Revenge actuated this wretch under the mask of patriotism, and he rejoiced in seeing the wife of the man he hated a prisoner in his custody.  Ignorant of the facts, his associates were ready to believe him in the right, and to join in the senseless cry against all who were their superiors in fortune, birth, and education.  This unfortunate lady was forbidden all intercourse with her friends, and it was in vain she attempted to obtain from her gaolers intelligence of what was passing in Paris.

“Tu verras—­Tout va bien—­Ca ira,” were the only answers they deigned to make; frequently they continued smoking their pipes in obdurate silence.  She occupied the back rooms of her house, because her guards apprehended that she might from the front windows receive intelligence from her friends.  One morning she was awakened by an unusual noise in the streets; and, upon her inquiring the occasion of it, her guards told her she was welcome to go to the front windows and satisfy her curiosity.  She went, and saw an immense crowd of people surrounding a guillotine that had been erected the preceding night.  Madame de Fleury started back with horror—­her guards burst into an inhuman laugh, and asked whether her curiosity was satisfied.  She would have left the room; but it was now their pleasure to detain her, and to force her to continue the whole day in this apartment.  When the guillotine began its work, they had even the barbarity to drag her to the window, repeating, “It is there you ought to be!—­It is there your husband ought to be!—­You are too happy, that your husband is not there this moment.  But he will be there—­the law will overtake him—­he will be there in time—­and you too!”

The mild fortitude of this innocent, benevolent woman made no impression upon these cruel men.  When at night they saw her kneeling at her prayers, they taunted her with gross and impious mockery; and when she sank to sleep, they would waken her by their loud and drunken orgies—­if she remonstrated, they answered, “The enemies of the constitution should have no rest.”