ion which took him more time than I
thought necessary, I could hear him muttering that, "_Les dames
Anglaises n'ont peur de rien, positivement rien_." I was not sorry when
I heard the massive door closed after me, with its bolts and chains
again secured; but, as I crossed the courtyard, the different aspect of
the house, with its closed windows, reminded me so forcibly of the
change that had occurred since my last visit, only three days
previously, that I felt more agitated than while traversing the
streets.

When I entered the drawing-room, in which a large circle were
assembled, Madame Craufurd, though the servants announced my name,
could hardly believe I was indeed come. She wept bitterly while
embracing me, and observed on the hardship of a person so aged as
herself being called on to witness two revolutions. All the horrors of
the first are recalled vividly to her mind, and her terror of what may
occur is proportioned to what she remembers to have formerly taken
place. Nothing seemed to pacify her terror so much as the fact of my
having been permitted to pass unmolested to her house, though she
considered me little less than insane to have undertaken the task.

"For myself," said Madame C----, "I have little fear (though her
blanched cheek and trembling hand told another story); but for those
dearer to me than life, what have I not to dread? You who know the
chivalrous sentiments of the Duc de Guiche, and the attachment
entertained by him and my granddaughter for the royal family, will
understand how much I have to dread for them from the vengeance which
their devotion to their sovereign may draw on their heads. _They_ are
not, as you are aware, time-servers, like so many others, who will
desert their king in his hour of need. No; they will brave death, I am
assured, rather than forsake in adversity those whose prosperity they
shared."

The marquis d'Aligre, one of, it not the, richest landed proprietors in
France, was among the circle at Madame Craufurd's, and evinced no
little composure and courage in the circumstances in which we found
ourselves. He joined me in endeavouring to soothe her fears; and
probably the fact of his having so immense a stake to risk in the
crisis now taking place, added not a little weight to the arguments he
urged to quiet her alarms. When people have so much to lose, their
calmness has an imposing effect; and the rhetoric of the most
accomplished orator would have probably been le