“‘Come, my beauties!’ said this wretch, ‘let me have a look at you all. I have cleared out my saloons, and they are getting tired of shooting and bayoneting. More’s the pity. Let me see how many more of you are fit to serve your country. Ah! my little aristocrat, have you escaped the guillotine and shooting? Lucky fellow; come, I think you will do for me, you’re young;’ and examining the rest, he selected nine. ‘Morbleu, only ten of you fit to smell powder, after all my care. Tonnerre de Dieu! I must discharge my chef de cuisine. There, garçons, take those fellows into the yard; the rest of these miserable wretches may be shot to-morrow, they are good for nothing else.’ “We were driven into a court-yard, there our arms were pinioned, and shortly afterwards we were put into a covered cart. I must have been blessed with a singularly strong constitution to have survived these trials, under which I beheld strong men die. I did live certainly, but I was greatly emaciated. Several other carts were filled with wretched-looking objects; and as soon as they had their complement they drove off, escorted by a troop of dragoons. We were taken to Brest, and were intended to supply the loss the French fleet had sustained by the guillotine. Many captains were beheaded, a rear-admiral imprisoned, and numbers of seamen declared disaffected were executed. “After being in the hospital a fortnight, where I was tolerably well cared for, I was placed on board a guardship. There was a kind and humane surgeon in the hospital, to whom I told my story, stating I was an Englishman by birth. “‘Mother and father English? Keep that to yourself, my lad,’ said the surgeon; ‘as surely as you say you are English, you will be shot.’ “I found I was entered on the books as Julian Coulancourt. Brest at that time was in a state of intense excitement. The tricolour was formally adopted as the national flag, and the navy of Republican France declared cleansed and regenerated. Though told by that villain Marachat, the tool of Collet d’Herbois, that my beloved mother and sister had perished, there were at times moments when I cheered myself with the idea that they yet lived. I knew that Herbois was the fiendish persecutor of my mother, and his tool Marachat might have spoken falsely to torture me. Why I was not taken out and shot with the first group is a mystery to me. However, the very idea that they might still live enabled me to sustain the hardships I went through. Divine hope, the sheet-anchor of man, held me up against despair.