your friends to France
will be thenceforward impracticable, and their chateau, as well as their
house in Paris, will be declared national property, and sold without
delay to the highest bidder. To you, who have as much understanding as
beauty, it is unnecessary to say more. Consult your heart, charming
Victoire! be happy, and make others happy. This moment is decisive of
your fate and of theirs, for you have to answer a man of a most decided
character."

Victoire's answer was as follows:--

"My friends would not, I am sure, accept of their fortune, or consent to
return to their country, upon the conditions proposed; therefore I have
no merit in rejecting them."

Victoire had early acquired good principles, and that plain steady good
sense, which goes straight to its object, without being dazzled or
imposed upon by sophistry. She was unacquainted with the refinements of
sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient
resolution to abide by the right. Perhaps many romantic heroines might
have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar
circumstances the mistress of Tracassier; and those who are skilled "to
make the worst appear the better cause" might have made such an act of
heroism the foundation of an interesting, or at least a fashionable
novel. Poor Victoire had not received an education sufficiently refined
to enable her to understand these mysteries of sentiment. She was even
simple enough to flatter herself that this libertine patriot would not
fulfil his threats, and that these had been made only with a view to
terrify her into compliance. In this opinion, however, she found herself
mistaken. M. Tracassier was indeed a man of the most decided character,
if this form may properly be applied to those who act uniformly in
consequence of their ruling passion. The Chateau de Fleury was seized as
national property. Victoire heard this bad news from the old steward,
who was turned out of the castle, along with his son, the very day after
her rejection of the proposed conditions.

"I could not have believed that any human creature could be so wicked!"
exclaimed Victoire, glowing with indignation: but indignation gave way to
sorrow.

"And the Chateau de Fleury is really seized?--and you, good old man, are
turned out of the place where you were born?--and you too, Basile?--and
Madame de Fleury will never come back again!--and perhaps she may be put
into prison in a