Law, religion, humanity, and common sense, hid their faces; innocent blood flowed in a stream, and terror reigned.

To Monsieur de Beaurepaire these republicans--murderers of women, children, and kings--seemed the most horrible monsters nature had ever produced; he put on black, and retired from society; he felled timber, and raised large sums of money upon his estate.

And one day he mounted his charger, and disappeared from the chateau.
Three months after this, a cavalier, dusty and pale, rode into the courtyard of Beaurepaire, and asked to see the baroness.

She came to him; he hung his head and held her out a letter.
It contained a few sad words from Monsieur de Laroche-jaquelin.

The baron had just fallen in La Vendee, fighting for the Crown.
From that hour till her death the baroness wore black.
The mourner would have been arrested, and perhaps beheaded, but for a friend, the last in the world on whom the family reckoned for any solid aid.