The King's and Queen's regiments, which had always been in rivalry with each other, both happened to be stationed in the same town. This afforded a grand opportunity for constant skirmishes between them, and you may be sure such worthy opponents were not going to lose their chances. One day a soldier of the King's regiment passed one belonging to the Queen's regiment. The former stopped the latter and said-- "Comrade, I can tell you something you do not know." "Well," replied the other, "if you tell it me I shall know it." "All right I the king ... the queen." "That is a lie," replied the other,--"it is the other way round, the queen ... the king." One insult was as gross as the other, and could only be wiped out by duels. About a hundred duels took place during the next twenty-four hours--three fell to my father's account. In one of them he was cut across the forehead. Luckily his head was as tough as Duguesclin's. He took no notice of this wound at the time, but it led to grave complications later, which nearly drove him out of his mind. My father took no part in the earlier events of the Revolution. The National Assembly was constituted, the Bastille fell, and Mirabeau sprang into fame, thundered and died. Meanwhile my father served as private soldier or corporal in provincial barracks. About 1790 he came with a detachment to Villers-Collerets, and there he met my mother, whom, as we have stated, he married November 28, 1792. In the meantime the Revolution was spreading throughout France, and coalitions were being formed between the foreign Powers. On August 27, 1791, four days after the first insurrection of the negroes at St. Domingo, Leopold I., Emperor of Germany, and Frederic-William II., King of Prussia, met at Pilnitz and, in the presence of M. de Bouillé, who enjoyed such a terrible celebrity in the affair of the Swiss at Nancy, drew up the following declaration:--