every advantage of their misfortune to strip them by fraud if not by violence of what little they might yet possess.
The dreadful news was borne by the first stragglers to Coblentz at about the same time as the news that in Paris the King had been deposed, the monarchy abolished, and the Republic proclaimed by the National Convention at the first of its deliberations.
Louis XVI had been removed to the Temple, a prisoner; and there were even rumours that he was to be brought to trial, attainted of treason in that he had invited foreigners in arms to invade France.
This news brought dismay to a little house on the Grünplatz, which Madame de Plougastel had rented upon the departure of the Princes, and where her cousin Kercadiou, his niece, and André-Louis were lodged with her. It put an end to the term of happiness which had reigned there for the last five weeks. The Princes, they presently heard, were at Namur, and the Comte de Plougastel was with them.
For Madame de Plougastel the immediate outlook was not too disconcerting. She was supplied if not with money at least with the valuable jewels she had brought away with her, and these should provide for many a day. But the Lord of Gavrillac was at the end of his resources, and compelled at last, for the first time in his life, to bend his mind to the sordid details of provision for his existence.
It was for André-Louis to come to the rescue. In the prosperous days of his fencing academy in Paris, seeking an investment for his considerable savings, he had purchased a farm in Saxony. At the time he had paid fifty thousand livres for the land, and this he now proposed to reconvert into gold, so as to provide for their needs.
With twenty louis borrowed from Madame de Plougastel, the half of the sum she pressed upon him, he set out for Dresden to negotiate the sale. All that we know of his activities there during the next four months is contained in two letters that survive out of several which appear to have passed between him and those he had left behind in Coblentz. The first of these is written from Dresden at the end of December.
Monsieur my Godfather: An offer at last for these lands of mine at Heimthal has been made of six thousand crowns, which is to say thirty thousand livres. I paid, as I think you know, over two thousand louis for them two years ago, and the purchase was represented to me as a bargain at the time, and rightly so as far as I am able to judge from an inspection of the property. The offer comes from the present Saxon tenant, who is imbued with the rascally acquisitive instincts commonly, but not on that account correctly, attributed to Hebrews. I say this the more feelingly since my mentor in these matters is a Jew named Ephraim, but for whose honesty I should long since have found myself in difficulties. Acting as my banker here, he has regularly collected rents and paid dues, and in consequence I find some six hundred crowns at my disposal, no inconsiderable sum in such times as these. It enables me, my dear godfather, to send you a draft on Stoffel of Coblentz for two hundred crowns, which will provide for your immediate necessities and those of my dear Aline. My good Ephraim points out to me that my tenant, actuated by the universal spirit in Germany at present towards French émigrés, hopes to trade upon my necessity and obtain the farm for one half of its value. He advises that sooner than submit to be robbed, I should rid myself of this tenant, and, until some honest purchaser presents himself, I should farm the land myself. There is certainly a living in it, if a modest one. But my inclinations are hardly agrarian. Considering that the state of things in France becomes steadily worse and encourages little hope of an early return to Gavrillac, which by now, moreover, will have suffered confiscation, it is necessary to do something to keep ourselves afloat. I revert to my erstwhile notion of turning to account my knowledge of the sword. I have talked of it with Ephraim, and on the security of the Heimthal property he will advance me the funds necessary to open and equip here in Dresden an academy of arms, which I do not doubt my capacity of rendering as prosperous as my old school in the Rue du Hasard. This is a pleasant town with an agreeable society, in which, once it were perceived that you are independent, you would find a cordial reception. I beg you, my dear godfather, to give it thought and write to me. If you decide to join me, I shall at once set about carrying my project into effect, and at the same time discover a suitable lodging for us all. It is not Peru that I offer you; but at least it is modest comfort and tranquillity. I add a little letter for Aline.
He also adds inquiries on their health and recommends himself to the remembrance of Madame de Plougastel.
The other surviving letter, from which we are similarly enabled to gather the march of events is from the Lord of Gavrillac. It is dated from Hamm in Westphalia on the 4th of the following February.
My dear godson: I write within a few hours of our arrival here to let you know that we are now at Hamm, where Monseigneur the Comte de Provence and Monseigneur the Comte d'Artois, by the hospitality of the King of Prussia, have established themselves. Monsieur de Plougastel is in their very restricted train and has desired Madame de Plougastel to join him here. Monsieur, learning that Madame de Plougastel and I were together at Coblentz, was very graciously moved, no doubt from his affection for my late brother, since I have done nothing to deserve it for myself, to offer me also the hospitality of his very diminutive court. And so we have all come here together, and we are lodged at the Bear, a house kept by kindly folk and not expensive. The plight of the Princes is pitiful in the extreme, and their quarters in Hamm are utterly unworthy of persons of their exalted rank. The hospitality of his Majesty the King of Prussia scarcely goes beyond permission to reside here. Hope of redemption seems to diminish daily. Yet the courage and fortitude of these Princes in adversity is beyond belief as it is beyond praise, even in this black hour when news comes from Paris of the horrible, incredible, sacrilegious crime of the canaille in putting the King to death. Monsieur has issued a declaration in which he assumes the regency, proclaims the Dauphin King of France, and nobly announces his sole ambition to be to avenge the blood of his brother, to break the chains which trammel his family, to place the Dauphin on the throne, and to restore to France her ancient constitution.
We are still, as Aline will have told you in her last letter, under the same difficulty of making a decision for the future. Rabouillet has contrived, at considerable peril to himself, to send me fifty louis saved before the confiscations took place, and he tells me also, good loyal soul, that he has buried the best of the silver so that it should not be seized. Almost I begin to think that your proposal, which we treated perhaps too lightly at the time, offers the only practical relief of our difficulties. But I am reluctant to become a burden upon you, my dear godson, nor have I the right.
Aline is well, and she sends you her affectionate greetings with mine. She talks of you constantly, from which it follows that her thoughts are constantly with you and that she misses you. This separation is not the least of our sorrows. But you are wise not to sell your land at a sacrifice in a time when we do not know where to look for our next resources.
CHAPTER IX
PROPOSAL
Three days after the receipt of that letter and a week after it was written, André-Louis appeared abruptly and unannounced in the town of Hamm, lying at the time under a pall of snow through which the river Lippe flowed like a stream of ink.
Two sentences in the letter were responsible for that precipitate journey: 'I am reluctant to be a burden upon you,' was one of them, and the allusion to the sorrow of the separation the other.
André-Louis came in person to demonstrate that this sorrow at least could be determined, and to combat his godfather's scruples to receive assistance from him, scruples which he regarded as fantastic.
He found the Bear to be a quite considerable inn, far better than his first view of this low-lying little town on the Lippe—not, indeed, much more than a village—would have led him to expect. A staircase of polished pine ascended from the common room to a gallery about three sides of which the guest-chambers were set, and the three best of these, despite shrinking funds and hazardous outlook, had been appropriated by the Lord of Gavrillac for himself and his niece.
Monsieur and Madame de Plougastel occupied a similar lodging on the ground-floor behind the common room, and two