It is easier to speak of it now than then, but the fact was that we of the new generation felt it very irksome and difficult to carry on the bitter quarrels of the last.

To the older _emigres_ the clock of time seemed to have stopped in the year 1792, and they remained for ever with the loves and the hatreds of that era fixed indelibly upon their souls.

They had been burned into them by the fiery furnace through which they had passed.

But we, who had grown up upon a strange soil, understood that the world had moved, and that new issues had arisen.

We were inclined to forget these feuds of the last generation.
France to us was no longer the murderous land of the _sans-culotte_ and the guillotine basket; it was rather the glorious queen of war, attacked by all and conquering all, but still so hard pressed that her scattered sons could hear her call to arms for ever sounding in their ears.