Charlotte Smith

“ A man who, with moderate abilities, applies his whole force to carry any favourite point, seldom fails of success.—D'Alonville, whose conduct, though he affected no revolutionary ardour, gave no rise to suspicions that he was not a friend to that cause—was allowed to go out of the town as a volunteer on a sortie, four days after his arrival. The party was driven with considerable loss, and D'Alonville became a prisoner to an English serjeant of infantry, to whom he gave up his arms, and desired to be conducted immediatley to the commanding officer of the piquet. ”

“ While the introduction to these people operated on the opinions of D'Alonville so very differently from what his brother had intended, he was himself engaged in studying, as far as he could do it with safety, the real sentiments of the people. In this enquiry he was sometimes repulsed by caution, and sometimes baffled by fear: but he was convinced, that there were a very great number of persons, even in Paris, who were only restrained by terror from openly declaring themselves ”

“ The earnest wish for an hour of general retribution against the monsters whose conduct disgraced human kind, was felt with redoubled force, when he added to it the hope of individual vengenace, and imagined the possibility of punishing with his own hand this apostate villain. ”

“ One of them was a soldier belonging to one of the old regiments, who declared that at the beginning of the revolution he had gone over, with many of his comrades, to the soi-disant patriots, believing that it was for the good of his country; but that he had since the death of the king, and the cruelty and madness of the leading men in the convention, repented daily of the part he had taken, and desired nothing so much as to have an opportunity of quitting the defence of a cause that had fallen into the management of such men. ”

“ It would be difficult to do justice to the scene that now passed between the two friends.—D'Alonville gave Ellesmere and Captain W. a slight sketch of his adventures since he parted with the former in London.—The affection that Ellesmere had always professed for him, was unchanged; it even appeared to be encreased by all that he had since suffered. It was not however in his power to take him to his own tent, for he could still be returned only as a prisoner ”

“ The next paragraph in the French newspaper which the deserter produced, gave a circumstantial detail of the execution; and added, that the beautiful wife of citizen Du Bosse, by whom he had no children, had been divorced from him some time before his death; had reclaimed her property, which had been granted her; and that she had since married the patriotic citizen Rouill, who had greatly contributed, by his Roman virtue, to the detection of this conspiracy against the republic, one and indivisible. ”