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Towards the end of November the missionaries, both Recollets and Jesuits, left the English fleet at Dover roads, and proceeded to their various colleges in France, patiently to await the time when they should be permitted to return to Canada.
The rulers of France might be excused for asking at this moment Does the lecturer of the Ligurian Republic mean to be our Washington, our Monk, or our Cromwell? He, however, received with alacrity the call of the trembling Directory. He harangued his soldiery, and made himself secure of their readiness to act as he might choose for them.
If there were ten thousand anti-aircraft guns in the British army, every one would be known as Archibald. When the British Expeditionary Force went to France it had none. All the British could do was to bang away at Taubes with thousands of rounds of rifle-bullets, which might fall in their own lines, and with the field guns. It was pie in those days for the Taubes!
Had it been told to Agassiz when he left Europe that in ten years he should be recalled to fill one of the coveted places at the Jardin des Plantes, the great centre of scientific life and influence in France, he would hardly have believed himself capable of refusing it. Nor does a man reject what would once have seemed to him a great boon without a certain regret.
By the former act we yielded up to France the sea route to India for the Dutch at the Cape were but the tools of the First Consul: by the latter we left Malta as the sole barrier against a renewed land attack on our Eastern possessions.
Are we here or in France? The devil fly away with all the Dulcineas in the world; for the well-being of a single knight-errant is of more consequence than all the enchantments and transformations on earth."
The envoy added, as a matter of private opinion however, that if an alteration were to be made in the constitution of the provinces, Maurice would prefer that it should be made in favour of France than of any other Government.
Why will the author then suppose, that the nobles and men of property in France have been banished, confiscated, and murdered, on account of the savageness and ferocity of their character, and their being tainted with vices beyond those of the same order and description in other countries?
A rising in Paris destroyed the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall. "How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world," Fox cried with a burst of enthusiasm, "and how much the best!"
But when the shadow of war actually fell on France these conversations and this letter faded into the background. It was no longer a question of what the French President expected from the King of England.
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