Like all timid folk of that day, the Comte de La Bastie, now citizen Mignon, found it more wholesome to cut off other people's heads than to let his own be cut off.

The sham terrorist disappeared after the 9th Thermidor, and was then inscribed on the list of emigres.

The estate of La Bastie was sold; the towers and bastions of the old castle were pulled down, and citizen Mignon was soon after discovered at Orleans and put to death with his wife and all his children except Charles, whom he had sent to find a refuge for the family in the Upper Alps.
Horrorstruck at the news, Charles waited for better times in a valley of Mont Genevra; and there he remained till 1799, subsisting on a few louis which his father had put into his hand at starting.

Finally, when twenty-three years of age, and without other fortune than his fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection, may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of Adrian, is the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity--taking it, like many another youth, for a vocation--on the red cloth of war.

On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton.