went out with Claudine to
obtain a passport. Thanks to God and good angels Claudine was small like
me, had black hair and eyes like mine, and there was no trouble in
arranging the passport. We took the diligence, and as I was clothed in
peasant dress, a suit of Claudine's, I easily passed for her.

Joseph had the diligence stop beside the park gate, of which he had
brought the key. He wished to avoid the village. We entered therefore by
the park, and soon I was installed in the cottage of my adopted parents,
and Joseph and his brothers said to every one that Claudine Leroy,
appalled by the horrors being committed in Paris, had come for refuge to
Morainville.

Then Joseph went back to Paris to try to save my father and my husband.
Bastien had already got himself engaged as an assistant in the prison. But
alas! all their efforts could effect nothing, and the only consolation
that Joseph brought back to Morainville was that he had seen its lords on
the fatal cart and had received my father's last smile. These frightful
tidings failed to kill me; I lay a month between life and death, and
Joseph, not to expose me to the recognition of the Morainville physician,
went and brought one from Rouen. The good care of mother Catharine was the
best medicine for me, and I was cured to weep over my fate and my cruel
losses.

It was at this juncture that for the first time I suspected that Joseph
loved me. His eyes followed me with a most touching expression; he paled
and blushed when I spoke to him, and I divined the love which the poor
fellow could not conceal. It gave me pain to see how he loved me, and
increased my wish to join my mother in England. I knew she had need of me,
and I had need of her.

Meanwhile a letter came to the address of father
Guillaume. It was a contrabandist vessel that brought
it and
of the first evening
other to the address
recognized the writing
set me to sobbing
all, my heart
I began (_Torn off and gone_.)
demanded of
my father of
saying that
country well
56
added that Abner and I must come also, and that it was nonsense to wish to
remain faithful to a lost cause. She begged my father to go and draw her
diamonds from the bank and to send them to her with at least a hundred
thousand francs. Oh! how I wept after seeing
letter! Mother Catharine
to console me but