Orphans of the Storm

Their romantic story was often whispered by country gossips. In infancy foundlings on the church steps of Notre Dame, then brought to this quiet Norman backwater by the Girards...

Locomotion in those pre-railroad days was by stage coach except for the rich and noble who rode in their chaises. The way of the diligence led past winding streams and bright me...

The Normandy-Paris stage swung into the city as the shades of evening were falling and deposited our heroines at journey's end in a little square beyond the Pont Neuf where the...

Quickly the man La Fleur took out a small phial and poured some few drops of a dark liquid on the girl's tongue. Half consciously swallowing it, she sank back again--this time,...

"Yes, and more, too," answered Picard, who enjoyed immensely being able to impart some information to his superiors. "Why, how do you suppose he acts to the common people who wa...

One hundred and fifty years of outlawry had made the Frochard clan a wolfish breed; battening on crime, thievery and beggary. The head of the house had suffered the extreme pena...

Henriette Girard had not only been saved from dishonor by Chevalier de Vaudrey, but she had won a devoted friend. Through his connections, the Chevalier knew much that was passi...

Daily the young Chevalier developed a warmer interest in the sweet and pure young girl at the faubourg lodgings. Always his visits brought a little delicious heart-flutter to He...

The giant stranger who had talked to Henriette and made friends with de Vaudrey was Jacques Danton. He and his colleague, Maximilien Robespierre, were destined to be the outstan...

They had always coped with popular ferments by picking off the individual leaders, and they did not doubt their ability to do the same thing now. As Danton spoke, an influential...

In the days following her immurement in the dreadful sub-cellar, Louise became the Frochards' breadwinner. Her pathetic blindness, lovely face and form, and sweet young voice at...

The Count's demands brought to a head a resolve that had taken possession of Chevalier de Vaudrey's heart and soul. Always the picture of the sweet Norman girl he had saved from...

The Chevalier de Vaudrey sought his Aunt and begged her to see his beloved before finally siding with the Count against him. The incident of the chance encounter with the blind...

With Henrietta condemned to the cruel fate of immurement in a prison for the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his aunt the Countess prostrated by the hag's re...

Henriette was nursed through a severe mental and bodily illness by Sister Genevieve directed by the visiting prison Doctor, none other than him who had examined the eyes of Loui...

The ex-retainer nicknamed "Forget-Not" bore a baleful grudge because of the cruelties inflicted on his own father many years before by the Countess's father--the cruel punishmen...

The jailers deliver the keys; the mob pours tumultuously into the female prison. What cries of joy, what sobs of relief from the saner inmates, as they try to _think_ their new,...

The wild and drunken madness of the triumphant people expended itself in many strange forms, of which none was stranger, more awesome, more ludicrous and yet more tragic than th...

The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatig...

Before telling you how the Chevalier de Vaudrey got out of Caen and how he fared forth to his love, it is meet that the reader should understand the rapidly changing conditions...

It was thus as a prisoner of the royalist faction, and quite out of touch with worldshaking events, that our young hero Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey lived through the earlier pe...

The farmer's cart nears the gate. The moon-faced Reuben is as impassive as ever. Though the tall assistant manages to keep his expression fairly immobile too, 'tis evident to us...

That awful Tribunal sat daily. During the height of the Terror, no time was allowed to prisoners for the preparation of their cases--no interval elapsed between the prisoners' a...

Poor trembling Henriette is next. The horrors of Maurice's condemnation and the thought of her little lost sister nearby, rack her with a stinging pain in which is commingled li...

We have explained that Danton took little part in the Government after the repelling of the foreign foe and the commencement of the Terror. He had no sympathy with the excesses...

The man Forget-not, directly the paper was signed, rushed past the speaker and out of the hall into the lobbies. He was followed presently by the Court's messenger. There was he...

Louise, guided by her faithful attendant Pierre, had left the courtroom directly after the condemnation. Leaning heavily upon him, the blind girl had staggered out, or pressed b...

A sansculotte soldier, less brutal than his fellows, had allowed Louise and Pierre to approach one side of the scaffold. They were more privileged than the frantic Picard, who c...

Within the next few minutes--even while the head executioner is making the little victim ready--Danton and his riders reach the barrier on the Guillotine side of Paris. Orders h...

His plea for the ways of Mercy--his gallant deeds (like this particular one) of risking all for the life of a friend--were as signposts to bewildered humanity. He foresaw the pr...