Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/104

 CHAPTER IX.

CLEMENCE.

T is the fair and pleasant land of France—a land of corn-fields and orchards and sunny garden-plots, where quiet villages nestle in shady nooks, and old châteaux stand proudly amidst their sheltering woods. You feel everywhere that this land has been for many a century tilled and cared for by the hand of man; that generation after generation sleeps in peace beneath the shadow of its gray old churches. Long ages of toil and civilization have left their impress here, and the present is the heir of a glorious and venerable past.

Yet, perhaps no country has ever suffered more. War after war has swept over it; cruel oppression made the Revolution a terrible necessity; and, again, the excesses of the Revolution made men forget the crimes of the despotism that engendered it. And in the days of which we write there brooded over all the portentous shadow of another despotism—almost crushing enough to recall the worst days of Louis, falsely called the Magnificent, and of his thrice-accursed successor.

Still, even in those evil times many a secluded nook seemed to be hidden in the hollow of His hand, so quietly did it slumber throughout all—escaping not indeed occasional suffering, but anything like general ruin.