Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/201

Rh three days' journey of the borders of civilization.

But his fall, which appeared to him so impossible, and such a political mistake, was no more of a fortuitous circumstance than his rise, which he could never have expected either.

Alas, I met in the streets of Philadelphia plenty of great men brought down to the dust again, men whose ambition had deceived them, fools punished for their folly, men of yesterday who were no longer men of to-day, and parvenus astonished to find that Fortune's wheel had not stood still when they were uppermost.

For my private instruction, my friend Duportail told me the names of the French refugees who had found in Philadelphia an ark of safety like that of Noah. The blowing up of the good ship, the French Monarchy, had been caused by their follies and mistaken notions, and the explosion had thrown a good number of them over to the United States. But they were not corrected or disabused of their errors, and brought to a better state of mind, but