Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/22

 It would have been all over with him in Paris the first of May in the year 1789.

It was lucky for him that he never saw La Réole. Then a quiet tragedy would have passed over him and no one been the wiser except Madame Blanchefleure, who would have found it all very amusing. The terrible, prodigious Revolution prevented Madame from putting her charming plan into execution.

That great Lord, Marquis Massimel de la Réole de Courtroy, enjoyed the distinguished honor of having his head cut off, immediately after the amiable King, which occurrence—no matter what scorners may say—cost him his life. This act was one of the proofs of the equality of all men, because the Revolution said so. Madame Blanchefleure in spite of the sweetest of tears, together with hundreds of the friends who had idled with her in those golden gardens of Versailles, was imprisoned in the dungeon of the Temple, along with the flower of the nobility of witty, elegant France. Professors, academicians, fashionable painters, enchanting poets. In fact the choicest spirits of France were here. A company composed entirely of men of noble birth, of men of distinguished career, whose important heredity made them dangerous—(The Revolution had a sharp eye for just such people). An assembly such as only could be found in France—grace, wit, charm, superior habits of living.

It was a glorious thing, the way they amused themselves here, and the way they went to death. Madame