For, in good truth, when, in the spring of 1794, the soft, nimble,
round-bodied, very polite, learned and loquacious little gentleman first
set eyes upon its mean roofs, prick ears and vacant whitewashed
countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared--for all the
inherited valour of his good breeding--and, above all, most horribly
disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he
found it impossible as yet to forgive.

Five years earlier, fired, like many another generous spirit, by
extravagant hope of the coming regeneration of mankind, he hurried off to
Paris after the opening of the National Assembly and fall of the
Bastille. With the overture to the millennium in full blast, must he not
be there to hear and see? Associating himself with the Girondist party he
assisted, busily enthusiastic, at the march of tremendous events, until
the evil hour in which friend began to denounce friend, and heads, quite
other than aristocratic--those of men and women but yesterday the idols
and chosen leaders of the people--went daily to the filling of _la veuve_
Guillotine's unspeakable market-basket. The spectacle proved too
upsetting both to Mr. Verity's amiable mind and rather queasy stomach.
Faith failed; while even the millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at
so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible
drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression
of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle,
the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of
being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little
neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head--so full
of ingenious thoughts and lively curiosity--of being sent flying to join
those of Brissot and Verginaud, of wayward explosive Camille and sweet
Lucile Desmoulins, in that same unspeakable basket.