When a great mirror was to be cast at St.-Gobain, M. Deslandes always took command of the works in full dress, his peruke well powdered and his sword by his side. Clearly such a director as this was out of keeping with a king who would not let his officers fire upon a howling mob, and who put on a red cap to oblige a swarm of drunken ruffians. M. Deslandes was followed into retirement by several of the administrators of the company, who emigrated, and in 1793 the Republic caused the cashier of the company, M. Guerin, to be guillotined on the heinous charge of corresponding with his former employers and friends beyond the frontier. Naturally this crime was committed, like so many similar crimes of that day, with an eye to the main chance. The shares of the administrators who had emigrated were confiscated, in the names of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and the confiscators sent sundry 'patriots' to sit on the administrative council of the company. Their incompetency was so ludicrous and mischievous that Robespierre, representing the State which had thus stolen an interest in the enterprise, could not stand it. He actually 'requisitioned' two noblemen--two 'aristocrats'--among the as yet undisturbed owners of the property, to come forward and direct it, just as the leader of a successful mutiny of convicts on board of a transport might 'requisition' the deposed captain and mate of the vessel to carry her safely through a storm! With the return of law and order in the person of the Corsican conqueror things resumed their normal course at St.-Gobain; and as I have already said, the company flourished under its old organisation down to the establishment of the Monarchy of July. Then the owners of the 'deniers' put themselves and their property under the general Civil Code, in the form of what is called in modern France a 'societe anonyme,' and at the first general meeting of the 'societe' in April 1831 the accounts of 128 years, over which no question had ever arisen among the representatives of the original holders, were presented and approved. Certainly this must be admitted to be a most noteworthy case of 'l'heredite dans l'honneur.'