About the Book
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1890 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXIV. ROMANCE OF THE MARTYRED KING. Though printing under the form of fiction, ray readers can see with what impartiality I have placed before their eyes, not only the terrible, the cruel, the bloodthirsty, the debased features of the Revolutionists, and the events which they fostered, but also the good, the beautiful, the sublime elements of those same people and events. To-day those persons are dead of whom I write. The events only remain. Immortalized by History, they can never die. I would gladly summon from the grave all those of whom I speak, --so few of whom filled out the appointed measure of their days, --and ask them if I have not pictured their careers, not perhaps exactly as they were, --for who can claim to know all mysteries?--but as they have seemed to my honest convictions. I would say to Mirabeau, " Tribune, arise!" to Louis Sixteenth, "Martyr, arise!" I would say: "Rise, all of you, --Favras, Lafayette, Bailly, Fournier the American, Jourdan the Headsman, Maillard, Theroigne de Mericourt, Barnave, Bouille, Gamain, Petion, Manuel, Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Vergniaud, Dumouriez, Marie Antoinette, Madame Campan, Barbaronx, Roland, Madame Roland, --king, queen, artisan, orators, generals, murderers, politicians! Rise, and declare if I have not candidly presented you to my own generation, --to the low, to the exalted, especially to women, --that is, to the mothers of our sons, whom we would gladly instruct in history." To the long liues of events, standing on either side of the road we have travelled together, I would thus appeal: "Great and luminous Fourteenth of July! Dark and threatening Fifth and Sixth of October! Thou crimson storm in the Champ de Mars, when powder was mixed with lightning, and the thunder of cannon mingled with heaven...
