Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/12

viii storm. There were travellers, attracted by curiosity or going through France on their way to Italy. There were youths sent by their families to learn French, and suddenly immersed in the whirlpool. There were pamphleteers and insolvent debtors, fleeing English prisons only to fall into French ones. On the other hand, there were prisoners in France whom the Revolution set at liberty. There were soldiers of fortune who offered their services to the Republic. There were "bluestockings" who employed their pens or their purses in its defence; nuns who underwent captivity and privations; and ex-mistresses of royal personages. There were diplomatists astounded at the collapse of the oldest dynasty in Europe. There were two future prime ministers, one a mere child, the other a young man, destined to the longest premierships of this century. There was a future poet laureate, enraptured with the Revolution, but eventually to become an ultra-Conservative. There were versifiers who chanted the triumphs of the Revolution, philosophers who early discerned the clouds on its horizon, materialists who were stupefied at the results of their theories, inventors who counted on prompt appreciation of their merits, clubbists whose congratulations to the Convention did not avert imprisonment. There were persons of all stations, peers and grooms, baronets and tradesmen, authors and artisans, fine ladies and seamstresses, the antipodes of society being sometimes hustled together into one cell. Some had narrow escapes from detention, others spent long months of anxious suspense in the numberless improvised prisons necessitated by the