Three months after this, a cavalier, dusty and pale, rode into the courtyard of Beaurepaire, and asked to see the baroness.  She came to him; he hung his head and held her out a letter.

It contained a few sad words from Monsieur de Laroche-jaquelin.  The baron had just fallen in La Vendee, fighting for the Crown.

From that hour till her death the baroness wore black.

The mourner would have been arrested, and perhaps beheaded, but for a friend, the last in the world on whom the family reckoned for any solid aid.  Dr. Aubertin had lived in the chateau twenty years.  He was a man of science, and did not care a button for money; so he had retired from the practice of medicine, and pursued his researches at ease under the baron’s roof.  They all loved him, and laughed at his occasional reveries, in the days of prosperity; and now, in one great crisis, the protege became the protector, to their astonishment and his own.  But it was an age of ups and downs.  This amiable theorist was one of the oldest verbal republicans in Europe.  And why not?  In theory a republic is the perfect form of government:  it is merely in practice that it is impossible; it is only upon going off paper into reality, and trying actually to self-govern limited nations, after heating them white hot with the fire of politics and the bellows of bombast—­that the thing resolves itself into bloodshed silvered with moonshine.

Dr. Aubertin had for years talked and written speculative republicanism.  So they applied to him whether the baroness shared her husband’s opinions, and he boldly assured them she did not; he added, “She is a pupil of mine.”  On this audacious statement they contented themselves with laying a heavy fine on the lands of Beaurepaire.

Assignats were abundant, but good mercantile paper, a notorious coward, had made itself wings and fled, and specie was creeping into strong boxes like a startled rabbit into its hole.  The fine was paid; but Beaurepaire had to be heavily mortgaged, and the loan bore a high rate of interest.  This, with the baron’s previous mortgages, swamped the estate.

The baroness sold her carriage and horses, and she and her daughters prepared to deny themselves all but the bare necessaries of life, and pay off their debts if possible.  On this their dependants fell away from them; their fair-weather friends came no longer near them; and many a flush of indignation crossed their brows, and many an aching pang their hearts, as adversity revealed the baseness and inconstancy of common people high or low.

When the other servants had retired with their wages, one Jacintha remained behind, and begged permission to speak to the baroness.

“What would you with me, my child?” asked that lady, with an accent in which a shade of surprise mingled with great politeness.