The elections at Paris were not completed, the Estates-General had not met, but the crowd of nobles, headed by the Count d’Artois and the Princes of Condé and Conti, had seen that the King, by calling together the three estates, and by permitting Necker to double the representation of the Commons, had created a Frankenstein, which, if allowed to use its power, would strangle privilege. The Count d’Artois ruled the Queen, and the Queen ruled the weak, good-natured King. Marie Antoinette had imbibed fears from the Count, and had communicated them to the King, and he had begun to feel restless and anxious about the great assembly, which he had convoked. He could not prevent its meeting, but he could constrain its utterances, and he only wanted an excuse for massing around it the army, to force the third estate to vote money, and to keep silence on the subject of reform. But where are Percenez and Gabrielle? We have lost sight of them in the crowd. We must return to their side. We left them before the Bastille, as the mob rolled towards Réveillon’s factory. ‘Now, my child, hold fast to me,’ said the colporteur; ‘my sister lives near this,--yonder, under the wall. She is married again; I always forget her new name,--it is not that of a Christian--at least, it is not a French name. She has married one of the Swiss guard, a widower, with a tall, hulking son, and she has got a daughter by her late-husband, Madeleine. Ah! you will like her,--a nice girl, but giddy.’ The little man worked his way through the crowd till he had brought Gabrielle before a small house that abutted upon the outer wall of the fortress. The door was shut and locked, and Percenez knocked at it in vain; then he beat against the window-glass, but no one answered, the fact being that his sister, Madame Deschwanden--such was the name unpronouncable by French lips--and her daughter, Madeleine Chabry, were upstairs, looking out of the window at the mob and its doings, and were deaf to the clatter at their own door. Percenez soon discovered the faces of his sister and niece, and stepping back to where he could be seen by them, signalled to them, and shouted their names. ‘Ah!’ screamed Madame Deschwanden, clasping her hands, then throwing them round her daughter’s neck, and kissing her, ‘there is my brother Stephen! Is it possible? Stephen, is that really you? What brought you here? How are all the good people at Bernay? I am charmed! Madeleine, I shall die of joy.’ ‘Will you let us in, good sister?’ ‘Who is that with you? You must tell me. But wait! I will open the door myself. Oh ecstasy! oh raptures! Praised be Heaven! Come, delicious brother, to my bosom.’ CHAPTER XIX. As soon as Madame Deschwanden had introduced her brother and Gabrielle to the inside of her house, she fell back, contemplated Percenez with outspread hands and head on one side, and then precipitated herself into his arms, exclaiming, ‘Oh ecstasy! oh raptures! it is he.’