On August 26, 1788, died one of the benefactresses of Latude, the Duchess of Kingston, who did not fail to mention her protégé in her will. We see him dutifully assisting at the sale of the lady's furniture and effects. He even bought a few things, giving a _louis d' or_ in payment. Next day, the sale being continued, the auctioneer handed the coin back to Latude: it was bad. Bad! What! did they take the Vicomte de Latude for a sharper? The coin bad! Who, he would like to know, had the insolence to make "an accusation so derogatory to his honour and his reputation?" Latude raised his voice, and the auctioneer threatened to bundle him out of the room. The insolent dog! "Bundle out rogues, not gentlemen!" But the auctioneer sent for the police, who put "the Sieur de Latude ignominiously outside." He went off calmly, and the same day summoned the auctioneer before the Châtelet tribunal, "in order to get a reparation as authoritative as the defamation had been public." In the following year (1789) Latude made a journey into England. He had taken steps to sue Sartine, Lenoir, and the heirs of Madame de Pompadour in the courts in order to obtain the damages due to him. In England, he drew up a memorandum for Sartine, in which he informed the late lieutenant of police of the conditions on which he would withdraw his actions. "M. de Sartine, you will give me, as compensation for all the harm and damage you have made me suffer unjustly, the sum of 900,000 livres; M. Lenoir, 600,000 livres; the heirs of the late Marquise de Pompadour and Marquis de Menars, 100,000 crowns; in all, 1,800,000 livres;" that is to say, about £160,000 in English money of to-day. [Illustration: LATUDE. _From the Painting by Vestier (Hôtel Carnavalet)._] The Revolution broke out. If the epoch of Louis XVI., with its mildness and fellow-feeling, had been favourable to our hero, the Revolution seems to have been ordained on purpose for him. The people rose against the tyranny of kings: the towers of the Bastille were overthrown. Latude, the victim of kings, the victim of the Bastille and arbitrary warrants, was about to appear in all his glory. He hastened to throw into the gutter his powdered peruque and viscount's frock; listen to the revolutionist, fierce, inflexible, indomitable, _uncompromising_: "Frenchmen, I have won the right to tell you the truth, and if you are free, you cannot but love to hear it. "For thirty-five years I meditated in dungeons on the audacity and insolence of despots; with loud cries I was calling down vengeance, when France in indignation rose up as one man in one sublime movement and levelled despotism with the dust. The will to be free is what makes a nation free; and you have proved it. But to preserve freedom a nation must make itself worthy of it, and that is what remains for you to do!"