Besides, how could they hope for success against the arms of a whole nation supported by a despotic government.  His friends talked sanguinely of aid from England, from Austria, and from Prussia; but he feared that that aid would come too late, after their houses were burnt, and their fields destroyed; after the best among them had fallen; after their children had been murdered; when the country should be depopulated, and nothing but the name of La Vendee left.

With all these fears around his heart, and yet with a firm determination to give himself entirely to the cause in which he was embarked, de Lescure rode home to tell his young wife, to whom he was but barely two years married, that he must not only leave her, and give up the life so congenial to both their tastes, which they had lately led; but that he was going to place himself in constant danger, and leave her and all he loved in danger also.

“You must be very good to Victoriana,” he said to his sister; “you must be very good to each other, Marie, for you will both have much to bear.”

“We will, we will,” said Marie; “but you, Charles, you will be with us; at any rate not far from us.”

“I may be near you, and yet not with you; or I may soon be placed beyond all human troubles.  I would have you prepare yourself; of all the curses which can fall on a country, a civil war is the most cruel.”

Madame de Lescure was the daughter of a nobleman of high rank; she had been celebrated as a beauty, and known to possess a great fortune; she had been feted and caressed in the world, but she had not been spoiled; she was possessed of much quiet sense; and though she was a woman of strong passions, she kept them under control.  When her husband told her, therefore, that the quiet morning of their life was over, that they had now to wade through contest, bloodshed, and civil war, and that probably all their earthly bliss would be brought to a violent end before the country was again quiet, she neither screamed nor fainted; but she felt, what he intended that she should feel that she must, now, more entirely than ever, look for her happiness in some world beyond the present one.

“I know, Victorine,” said he, when they were alone together in the evening, when not even his own dear sister Marie was there to mar the sacred sweetness of their conference, “I know that I am doing right, and that gives me strength to leave you, and our darling child.  I know that I am about to do my duty; and you would not wish that I should remain here in safety, when my King and my country require my services.”

“No, Charles; I would never wish that you should be disgraced in your own estimation.  I could perfectly disregard what all others said of you, as long as you were satisfied with your own conduct; but I would not for any worldly happiness, that you should live a coward in your own esteem.”

“My own, own Victorine,” said he, “how right you are!  What true happiness could we have ever had, if we attempted to enjoy it at the expense of our countrymen!  Every man owes his life to his country; in happy, quiet times, that debt is best paid by the performance of homely quiet duties; but our great Father has not intended that lot for us.”