Still he had himself seen carriages plundered and broken to pieces by the mob, and the gates were closely guarded.  Seeing our distress, he was about to go with Abbe to the Louvre, to learn whether my sister and her son were there, when one of the servants came up to tell us that M. Clement Darpent requested to see my mother, having brought us tidings of Madame la Vicomtesse.

My poor mother never could endure the name of M. Darpent, because she did not like my brother’s friendship with any one not noble, but she was as glad to see him then as if he had been a Montmorency or a Coucy.

I always like his manners, for they were even then more English than French.  Though going through all due form, he always seemed to respect himself too much to let any one be supercilious with him; and however she might begin at a vast distance, she always ended by talking to him just as if he were, as she called it, our equal.  As if he were not infinitely the superior of the hundreds of trumpery little apes of nobles who strutted about the galleries of the Louvre, with nothing to do but mayhap to carry the Queen’s fan, or curl her poodle’s tail!

I see I have been writing just as I felt in those fervent days of my youth, when the quick blood would throb at my heart and burn in my cheek at any slight to the real manhood and worth I saw in him, and preference for the poor cringing courtiers I despised.  The thought of those old days has brought me back to the story as all then seemed to me—­the high-spirited, hot-tempered maiden, who had missed all her small chances of even being mild and meek in the troubles at home, and to whom Paris was a grievous place of banishment, only tolerable by the aid of my dear brother and my poor Meg, when she was not too French and too Popish for me.  But that was not her fault, poor thing.

My mother, however, was grateful enough to Clement Darpent for the nonce, when he told how he had seen Meg safe beyond the gates.  Moreover, he assured us that so far from 8000 horse being ready to storm the city (I should like to have seen them!  Who ever took a fortress with a charge of horse?) barely 200 had escorted their Majesties.  The Coadjutor had shown M. Blancmesnil a note from the Queen telling him so, and summoning him to St. Germain.

It was likely, M. Darpent said, that the city would be besieged, but he did not foresee any peril for us, and he promised to watch over us, as he would over his own mother, and that he would give us continual intelligence so that we might provide for our safety.  It was amusing to see how eagerly my mother accepted this offer, though she had almost forbidden him the house when my brother left us.

I am sure my mother was as uneasy as any of us when he did not appear on the morning after he had gone with his father on the deputation to St. Germain.  However, he did come later on in the afternoon, bringing a note from Meg.  He had not seen her, only Nicolas and little Gaspard, and he, like all the rest, was greatly incensed at the manner in which the magistrates had been treated.  His father had, he said, caught a violent cold, and had been forced to go to bed at once.  In fact it really was the poor old man’s death-stroke, and he never quitted his chamber, hardly even his bed.