The children hearing these words, and recollecting Madame de Fleury's danger, abandoned all their little property, and instantly obeyed her orders to go home to their parents. Victoire at last saw Madame de Fleury safe in her carriage. The coachman drove off at a great rate; and a few minutes afterwards Tracassier's myrmidons arrived at the school- house. Great was their surprise when they found only the poor children's little books, unfinished samplers, and half-hemmed handkerchiefs. They ran into the garden to search for the nun. They were men of brutal habits, yet as they looked at everything round them, which bespoke peace, innocence, and childish happiness, they could not help thinking it was a pity to destroy what could do the nation no great harm after all. They were even glad that the nun had made her escape, since they were not answerable for it; and they returned to their employer satisfied for once without doing any mischief; but Citizen Tracassier was of too vindictive a temper to suffer the objects of his hatred thus to elude his vengeance. The next day Madame de Fleury was summoned before his tribunal and ordered to give up the nun, against whom, as a suspected person, a decree of the law had been obtained. Madame de Fleury refused to betray the innocent woman; the gentle firmness of this lady's answers to a brutal interrogatory was termed insolence--she was pronounced a refractory aristocrat, dangerous to the state; and an order was made out to seal up her goods, and to keep her a prisoner in her own house. CHAPTER X "Alas! full oft on Guilt's victorious car The spoils of Virtue are in triumph borne, While the fair captive, marked with many a scar, In lone obscurity, oppressed, forlorn, Resigns to tears her angel form."--BEATTIE. A close prisoner in her own house, Madame de Fleury was now guarded by men suddenly become soldiers, and sprung from the dregs of the people; men of brutal manners, ferocious countenances, and more ferocious minds. They seemed to delight in the insolent display of their newly-acquired power. One of those men had formerly been convicted of some horrible crime, and had been sent to the galleys by M. de Fleury. Revenge actuated this wretch under the mask of patriotism, and he rejoiced in seeing the wife of the man he hated a prisoner in his custody. Ignorant of the facts, his associates were ready to believe him in the right, and to join in the senseless cry against all who were their superiors in fortune, birth, and education. This unfortunate lady was forbidden all intercourse with her friends, and it was in vain she attempted to obtain from her gaolers intelligence of what was passing in Paris.