IN THE REIGN OF TERROR

CONTENTS

I A Journey to France
II A Mad Dog
III The Demon Wolf
IV The Clouds Gather
V The Outburst
VI An Anxious Time
VII The 2d of September
VIII Marie Arrested
IX Robespierre
X Free
XI Marie and Victor
XII Nantes
XIII In the Hands of the Reds
XIV The Noyades
XV England

CHAPTER I

A Journey to France

"I don't know what to say, my dear."

"Why, surely, James, you are not thinking for a moment of letting
him go?"

"Well, I don't know. Yes, I am certainly thinking of it, though I
haven't at all made up my mind. There are advantages and disadvantages."

"Oh, but it is such a long way, and to live among those French people,
who have been doing such dreadful things, attacking the Bastille,
and, as I have heard you say, passing all sorts of revolutionary
laws, and holding their king and queen almost as prisoners in
Paris!"

"Well, they won't eat him, my dear. The French Assembly, or the
National Assembly, or whatever it ought to be called, has certainly
been passing laws limiting the power of the king and abolishing
many of the rights and privileges of the nobility and clergy; but
you must remember that the condition of the vast body of the French
nation has been terrible. We have long conquered our liberties,
and, indeed, never even in the height of the feudal system were the
mass of the English people more enslaved as have been the peasants
of France.

"We must not be surprised, therefore, if in their newly-recovered
freedom they push matters to an excess at first; but all this will
right itself, and no doubt a constitutional form of government,
somewhat similar to our own, will be established. But all this is
no reason against Harry's going out there. You don't suppose that
the French people are going to fly at the throats of the nobility.
Why, even in the heat of the civil war here there was no instance
of any personal wrong being done to the families of those engaged
in the struggle, and in only two or three cases, after repeated
risings, were any even of the leaders executed.

"No; Harry will be just as safe there as he would be here. As to
the distance, it's nothing like so far as if he went to India, for
example. I don't see any great chance of his setting the Thames
on fire at home. His school report is always the same--'Conduct
fair; progress in study moderate'--which means, as I take it, that
he just scrapes along. That's it, isn't it, Harry?"

"Yes, father, I think so. You see every one cannot be at the top
of the form."

"That's a very true observation, my boy. It is clear that if there
are twenty boys in a class, nineteen fathers have to be disappointed.
Still, of course, one would like to be the father who is not
disappointed."

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IN THE REIGN OF TERROR