THE fair Marguerite found no difficulty in gaining access to Sir Robert. Her beauty, her distress, her tale at once simple and affecting, all conspired to move him. He laid her petition and her woes at the foot of the throne. Majesty was pleased to find extenuating circumstances in Mitford's case, and a reprieve was granted to him.
The bitter draught of grief had been too much for the gentle Marguerite. Her faculties had been too nervously awakened. While her lover required her aid, reason had kept its throne. His safety insured, she became a maniac, and the inmate of a mad-house.
Still farther mercy awaited our hero. After some detention in prison, he was liberated, on condition that he should leave the kingdom, never to return.
YEARS had now elapsed. Mitford's error and his shame had alike been forgotten; and it was supposed he was dead. It was not until the tempest of a new revolution awoke regenerated France to a sense of the wrongs endeavored to be inflicted on her by a Bourbon, whose family a million of foreign bayonets had seated on the throne, and until Paris taught all the capitals of Europe how easily a large city could resist a well-appointed army, that a ray of light was shed upon his fate.
The barriers of the Rue Richelieu had been erected by the people, and were furiously attacked by squadrons of infantry and cavalry. The Parisians, led by a most intrepid young man, evidently a foreigner, defended it to the very utmost. Three charges had been made, and successfully repulsed. A fourth threatened to carry the barriers. Some of the pickets were overthrown; and already had a few of the light cavalry penetrated within. A few stout hearts strove hand to hand with the military, but numbers had given way. In this emergency, the gallant leader of the people, waving his tri-colored flag, sprang in front of the wavering multitude. His gestures, his example, rëanimated them. Again they pressed forward, and bearing with them the tide of victory, they successfully repulsed the military; but their leader had sealed his conquest with his life. He fell, fighting hand to hand and foot to foot with the leader of the hostile soldiery, and their bodies lay close together, in the sleep of death.