A revolutionary tribunal held its permanent sitting at Orange, and every day carts full of victims were sent off thither from Avignon. My friend the Marquise ---- was then a child of six years old; a plan was laid to take her in the cart and throw her into the Rhone by the way: she could not be convicted of _incivisme_, but she was an heiress. The plot was defeated by her _bonne_ or nurse-maid, who took care that the child should be out of the way at the time of the departure of the cart. The trials at Orange were the pleasantest scenes imaginable. "Tu n'es pas royaliste? Tu n' as pas conspiré contre l'état?"[43] or some such questions, in an ironical tone, decided the fate of the prisoner. "Voilà des hommes qui tranchent sur tout,"[44] said I to my narrator. He forgave the pun. An elderly woman,--her understanding childish through age, and who was deaf withal,--was put in accusation with her son. "Tu as pleuré la mort du roi,"[45] said the judges to the mother, charging her also with having put on mourning on the occasion. "O yes," said the old woman, "I was very sorry for the king, poor, dear, good man; and I put on a black silk apron and a black ribbon round my cap." The judges, seeing the people inclined by this simplicity to a sentiment of compassion, advanced to something more serious. "Tu as conspiré contre l'état."[46] Here the son put himself forward: "Messieurs, do what you will with me; but my mother--you see her imbecillity; she is deaf: how can she have conspired against the state?" "Elle est sourde?" said the judge: "écris, greffier, qu'elle a conspiré sourdement contre l'état."[47] This pun is not to be forgiven. Arrived at the place of execution, the mother, seeing the assembled crowd, asked her son the meaning of it; whether it was a fair, or some _fête_. He obtained as a favour from the executioner, that his mother might be the first to suffer death. A noble had a conversation with a man who, though known as one of the chief assassins of that æra, lived quietly at Avignon. "I should imagine that, since you have failed of your purpose, you must feel some regret at having uselessly shed so much blood."--"Au contraire, our regret is that we did not shed more: mais ce sera pour une autre fois."[48] In expectation of this _autre fois_, some of the few nobles to whom any wealth was left were making up a purse in readiness for a second emigration:--let it be remembered this was in the year 1818. Others of them lived economically, indifferent as to the consideration in which they might be held after so many mortifications; or disgusted with the law of equal partition of inheritance, which reduced all their children to mediocrity of wealth,--an evil they wished to remedy by their savings. I recollect, in passing, that I was well acquainted with a noble, an aristocrat, who detested every act of the constituent assembly, but thought this law of _partage_ perfectly just and reasonable: he was a younger brother.