daughter. Madame Elisabeth was still allowed to say her prayers in
peace, but _ci-devant_ dukes and counts were getting scarce: those who
had not perished at the hand of Citizen Samson were plying some trade
in Germany or England.

There were aristocratic joiners, innkeepers, and hairdressers. The
proudest names in France were hidden beneath trade signs in London and
Hamburg. A good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet
Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims
from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin,
baffled, back to France.

Aristocrats were getting scarce, so it was now the turn of deputies of
the National Convention, of men of letters, men of science or of art,
men who had sent others to the guillotine a twelvemonth ago, and men
who had been loudest in defence of anarchy and its Reign of Terror.

They had revolutionised the Calendar: the Citizen-Deputies, and every
good citizen of France, called this 19th day of August 1793 the 2nd
Fructidor of the year I. of the New Era.

At six o'clock on that afternoon a young girl suddenly turned the
angle of the Rue Ecole de Medecine, and after looking quickly to the
right and left she began deliberately walking along the narrow street.

It was crowded just then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering
before every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual
spectacle on the Place de la Revolution. The men had paused at the
various drinking booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn
of these Amazons next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were