The False Chevalier or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette

"Germain, my knight," whispered Cyrène at the harpsichord, the bright tears in her eyes, "I must not keep you now. Go to the Queen. It is for times of peril that descendants of...

Germain was now committed to the most desperate courses to maintain his assumed character. He left France, and by way of London, took ship for his colony. The Canada of 1788 was...

The widow Langlois was surprised to see her lodger return so soon to Quebec. He saw quickly that she was dying of curiosity, and concluded that he and his affairs had been the s...

Dominique made an incomparable butler. It boots not to tell how, under his military sway, the servants seemed almost to acquire the new Prussian drill; the stores and cellars we...

Whoever passed within the walls of the Conciergerie was counted lost. Of the prisons of the Revolution, it was that to which the accused were transferred from the others on the...

At a second-story window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St. Honoré--known just then as the Rue Honoré, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial ari...

"Bring us the best wine in the house," exclaimed one of them, a bronzed and dried soldier in a maroon coat, waving his hand to his lackey, who responded and disappeared.

The Prince, as Colonel of the company, came specially to Troyes by the desire of Collinot, though the trouble bored him, for he liked Germain, and would never have raised the qu...

The Guardsmen offered to scour the woods in a body. Lecour soberly recommended a different plan, which they adopted, and placing his six friends and several royal gamekeepers in...

Cyrène, when she found herself in darkness, had a confused idea that she was waking from a dream and lying in her bed at the house in the Rue Honoré. Under that impression she d...

Next morning, after old Lecour had, with a heart full of content, and a pipeful of tobacco, taken his son the round of his warehouses and granaries, his piles of furs, his mount...

"Oh, for the love of God, try, citizen," she sobbed. Supporting her he signed for a _fiacre_ and drove her to his room not far away, where he left her with the housekeeper, and...

The prisoners were condemned to death, in the terrible form of breaking on the wheel. Wife Gougeon and the Admiral returned late on the last night before the execution to the ol...

The son of the merchant Lecour was a handsome youth, and there was great joy in the family at his coming home to St. Elphège. For he was going to France on the morrow; it was wi...

It so happened that about midnight Germain crossed the Seine by the Petit-Pont, a bridge not so public as the Pont-Neuf, and, regardless of the robberies always occurring, plung...

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--My good fortune is inexpressible. The whole of your dreams for me are fulfilled: can you believe it, your son has--but I will not anticipate. I can scarcely tr...

"The 25th of January," records the latter in his journal, "there entered my apartments, about half-past ten in the morning, a young man, wearing a sword and a hat with a white p...

That evening there was a ball on the flat above. It was refreshingly democratic. The rag-pickers who lodged with Madame Gougeon and laid the foundation of her iron business, att...

For several days he revelled in exploring Eaux Tranquilles. He became familiar with the paths of the gardens, the different statues and fountains. Sweet odours continually seeme...

On New Year's morning de Lotbinière was crossing the great courtyard of the Louvre, when he heard the voice of Louis de Léry calling him. The Bodyguard was hurrying forward with...

"Who is this Monsieur de Répentigny, Chevalier?--tell me," asked the Princess, who was holding her little evening court in full circle on the balustraded terrace behind the chât...

It appears from the foregoing letter that Germain, before his presentation, had vacillated in his purpose, so far as his using the name Répentigny was concerned. All such vacill...

The first few days by Germain and Cyrène, after the death of de Bailleul, were spent in genuine sorrow. Their thoughts were recalled to those dear and delicious weeks at Fontain...

At noon, on a day late in October, 1786, the Merchant of St. Elphège sat at the pine dinner-table in his kitchen, opposite his wife, resting his wooden soup spoon on its butt on...

An enormous yellow and black coach lumbered and strained along by the aid of six lean horses, and many elaborate springs, chains and straps, from Brittany towards Paris. The aut...

Dinner took place at four, with the windows darkened. At the right and left of the host respectively were the Prince and Princess de Poix. Germain presided at the foot of the ta...

Dominique and the citizeness proceeded as unobtrusively as they could along the Rue Honoré. He hurried her past the Rue Florentin, down which he knew, without looking, was to be...

Germain hastened back to Troyes, taking up Dominique on the way. It was evening when his coach brought him past the gate sentry and through the stray groups in the courtyard of...

The force of circumstances had proved too great. What strength had his training or his age to resist them? The old master, Love, the compeller of so many heroisms and so many cr...

Having added to his toilet the special elegance of powdering his hair, arrayed himself in his finest flowered waistcoat, and critically disposed his laces, Germain took seat in...

All afternoon of the day of his arrival at St. Elphège, lofty clouds had been moving in threatening masses across the sky. When the Lecours were rejoicing together at supper, a...

He went to the first on the list and obtained an interview in private with his chief secretary, from which he issued with a large sealed envelope, which contained a handsome par...

At midnight the full moon, silver-gilt, touched the house-fronts of the Street of the Hanged Man. They lit the figure and slouched hat of Jude, who, carrying a package, slunk up...

Nothing pleased de Lotbinière better than shaping a policy. His dark eyes were constantly full of plan, whether they looked at you or into the masses of a boulevard flowing with...

All through the long illness of Cyrène, which followed the revolt at Eaux Tranquilles, and especially after her first grief for the misguided men who had fallen in the corridor,...

Germain, left alone in the house, bolted the door, returned with trembling limbs to the room above and threw himself down in his chair blanched and nerveless. They who have expe...

Lorgnette in hand, Cyrène was sitting in the music chamber of the Hôtel de Noailles, scanning the bars of a sheet of music sent her by her suitor. Near by was the harpsichord on...

The Council of the Galley-on-Land were gathered again in Gougeon's shop at two in the morning. All Paris was sleeping, and even the orgies of the Beggars' Ball had sunk to silen...

Cyrène passed down her favourite oleander path at sunset to the great vinery in the Noailles garden. The oleanders were covered with their roseate blooms, and their beauty and t...

Jude, who had the instincts of a Spanish Dominican, kept the closest watch upon the judicial proceedings against the highwaymen. He was promptly at the Châtelet at the time of t...

"End the farce, fool," he exclaimed to himself despondently, hurrying to the quarters of the Princess. She received him "in her bath,"--a circumstance not unusual and which mean...

Remorse in all its horror seized him with the last glance of Cyrène's tearful eyes. He could not but feel the demand of those eyes for fine honour in the man on whom they rested...

Fortified with the glimpse into the camp of his adversaries which his bold call upon de Lotbinière gave, Germain lost no time in making his preparations for the approaching batt...

He might have taken a path directly through his own park to the château, but he preferred the highway to Fontainebleau, and, passing the gates of Eaux Tranquilles, entered the g...

Winter passed. The company of Noailles returned from its quarters at Troyes to Versailles. Whatever he did, his passion for Cyrène coloured every thought and scene with an artis...

Louis Réné Chaussegros de Léry, that model of blue-blooded elegance, was not the person to encourage any plebeian in basking in the smiles of aristocratic society. There was an...

The Oeil de Boeuf, the famous hall of the courtiers, had a magical enchantment for Lecour. When he first rested his red-heeled shoes upon its polished floor, having entered in t...

As the closing of Collinot's door was an unusual proceeding, and was known among the regiment to denote something very particular, speculation and excitement immediately became...

This town, in the heart of the woods, had no other sources of livelihood than a vegetable market for the Palace, the small wants of the wooden-shoed foresters and of the workmen...

Lecour's temper gave out at the irreconcilability of Louis during the duel, and as soon as he reached the quarters he commenced to return insult for insult. He exclaimed among h...

A hazy hope concerning his descent had haunted Lecour for some months past. That the Chevalier de Lincy was really in some manner his relative became his belief. He argued that...

The carriage of the Prince came last and in it sat the Prince and Princess, Cyrène and Jude, while Lecour rode alongside for some miles. How more and more he dreaded the revelat...

Along the highway through the ancient Forest of Fontainebleau, the coach of the Chevalier de Bailleul, carven and gilt in elegant forms of the reign of Louis XVI., and driven wi...