“You are a charming, but incomprehensible girl—­since you do not like compliments, you shall not be addressed with empty flattery.  It is in the power of the person who dictates this, not only to make you as rich and great as your cousin Manon, but also to restore to fortune and to their country the friends for whom, you are most interested.  Their fate as well as your own is in your power:  if you send a favourable answer to this note, the persons alluded to will, to-morrow, be struck from the list of emigrants, and reinstated in their former possessions.  If your answer is decidedly unfavourable, the return of your friends to France will be thenceforward impracticable, and their chateau, as well as their house in Paris, will be declared national property, and sold without delay to the highest bidder.  To you, who have as much understanding as beauty, it is unnecessary to say more.  Consult your heart, charming Victoire! be happy, and make others happy.  This moment is decisive of your fate and of theirs, for you have to answer a man of a most decided character.”

Victoire’s answer was as follows:—­

“My friends would not, I am sure, accept of their fortune, or consent to return to their country, upon the conditions proposed; therefore I have no merit in rejecting them.”

Victoire had early acquired good principles, and that plain steady good sense, which goes straight to its object, without being dazzled or imposed upon by sophistry.  She was unacquainted with the refinements of sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient resolution to abide by the right.  Perhaps many romantic heroines might have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar circumstances the mistress of Tracassier; and those who are skilled “to make the worst appear the better cause” might have made such an act of heroism the foundation of an interesting, or at least a fashionable novel.  Poor Victoire had not received an education sufficiently refined to enable her to understand these mysteries of sentiment.  She was even simple enough to flatter herself that this libertine patriot would not fulfil his threats, and that these had been made only with a view to terrify her into compliance.  In this opinion, however, she found herself mistaken.  M. Tracassier was indeed a man of the most decided character, if this form may properly be applied to those who act uniformly in consequence of their ruling passion.  The Chateau de Fleury was seized as national property.  Victoire heard this bad news from the old steward, who was turned out of the castle, along with his son, the very day after her rejection of the proposed conditions.

“I could not have believed that any human creature could be so wicked!” exclaimed Victoire, glowing with indignation:  but indignation gave way to sorrow.

“And the Chateau de Fleury is really seized?—­and you, good old man, are turned out of the place where you were born?—­and you too, Basile?—­and Madame de Fleury will never come back again!—­and perhaps she may be put into prison in a foreign country, and may die for want—­and I might have prevented all this!”