Taking the Bastile; Or, Pitou the Peasant A Historical Story of the Great French Revolution

At the time when the Queen and her consort were leaving Versailles, never more to return under its roof, the following scene was taking place in one of its inner yards, damp wit...

Under the burning July sun the crowds awaited, shuddering with fever. Gonchon's men had joined in with Marat's, the suburbs hailing each other as brothers. Gonchon was at the he...

Ange was too young to feel the whole extent of his loss: but he divined that the angel of the hearth had vanished: and when the body was taken to the churchyard and interred, he...

It was on the morning of the fourteenth of July that Billet opened oratorical fire against the monument which had for five centuries weighed like an incubus on the breast of Fra...

Billet looked at the mossgrown edifice, resembling the monsters of fable covered with scales. He counted the embrasures where the great guns might be run out again and the wall-...

Mistress Billet was a fat woman who honored her husband, delighted in her daughter and fed her field hands as no other housewife did for miles around. So there was a rush to be...

Count George Oliver Charny was a tall man of thirty-five, with a strong countenance warning one of his determination. His bluish grey eyes, quick and piercing as the eagle's, hi...

The King breathed again: and consoled himself with his regaled popularity for what his Bourbon pride had suffered in truckling to the Paris mob. The Nobility prepared to flee or...

One of the first feelings of the masses after a victory is for destruction, unfortunately. The memorials of the prison were turned out of the large room, where the records of al...

About six that morning a police-agent from the capital, accompanied by two inferior policemen, had arrived at Villers Cotterets where they presented themselves to the police jus...

He wanted to utilize it. He gathered the crumbs of his aunt's meal to feed his lizards (he was a naturalist who was never without pets,) caught some flies for his ants and frogs...

His high color had not left him. An early riser and proud of the heartiness he had imbibed with the morning breeze, he breathed noisily and set his foot vigorously on the floor.

Andrea's confession was a long one for it was not until eleven at night that the royal boudoir door opened, and on the sill was seen the Countess of Charny, kissing her mistress...

The night went by quietly. At midnight the Queen had tried to go out to the Trianon Palace but the National Guards had refused to let her pass. When she spoke of feeling fear, t...

Indeed, on attentively looking on the right, Father Billet saw black detachments marching noiselessly in the shadow of St. Denis Plain, horse and foot. Their weapons glimmered i...

The street appeared void and lonesome to Billet and his friend because the cavalry in chase of the Hyers, had gone through the market and scattered after them in the side street...

Once on the river edge, the two countrymen, spying arms glitter on the Tuileries Bridge, in all probability, not in friendly hands, lay down in the grass beneath the trees, and...

The Queen was reposing after the day of felicitation. She had her janissaries around her, her cohort of young bravoes, and having reckoned up her foes, she was wishful for the o...

Gilbert had retired into a window recess, while the King paced the Bulls-eye Hall, called on account of a round window in the wall, thinking now of public matters, then of his v...

While the multitude poured, roaring with delight and anger at the same time, into the yards of the prison, two men were floundering in the ditch: Billet and Pitou. The latter wa...

She sat at a table, with priests, courtiers, generals and her ladies surrounding her. At the doorways young officers, full of ardor and courage, rejoiced in the riots which gave...

Spite of the cold and the darkness, a young man, wrapped in a mantle so voluminous as to hide a babe in his arms, strode over the white fields out of the town of Villers Cottere...

On the way back to Paris, Gilbert stopped at St. Ouen to see Necker's daughter. He had a suspicion that the financier had not gone to Brussels as everybody was led to think. Ind...

Pitou was spurred by the two most powerful emotions in the world, love and fear. Panic bade him take care of himself as he would be arrested and perhaps flogged; love in Catheri...

Without knowing who was helping her, Andrea began to recover consciousness but instinctively she knew help had come. At length, with open but ghostly eyes, she stared at Charny...

"I ask you about your health," said the father to the pallid, nervous youth, "and you answer that you are well. Now I ask you if your reserve towards your schoolfellows arises f...