Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/128

108 francs, but they required double the sum. When one of them proposed to kiss her she did not think it safe to decline, and was only thankful that the other half-dozen, to say nothing of the crowd waiting in the court, did not follow suit. Porters and servants were afraid of refusing admission to these intruders. Lady Rivers at Lyons found matters even worse, for she was told it was prudent to wait on the fishwives, who had just shown their power by making the Comtesse d'Artois turn back to Paris. She was graciously received, and dismissed with a "Nous nous reverrons." Mrs. Swinburne, returning to London in December 1789, was stopped by the fishwives of Boulogne, who took her for one of Orleans's mistresses about to rejoin him in England. She had to argue with them that she was neither young nor pretty, and that the Duke could not have such bad taste. Happily, the landlady of an English hotel, Mrs. Knowles, came up and pacified the viragoes. Mrs. Swinburne in the previous October had had information from her shoemaker of the intended march on Versailles. She went thither and gave warning to the wife of Marshal de Beauvau, but it was unheeded. William Hunter, a barrister, landing at Boulogne in February 1792, was unmolested till he reached Montreuil. His landing, by the way, was somewhat singular. Women actually carried the voyagers on their backs a quarter of a mile from