Thus the lover writes, “A thousand thanks, a thousand thanks, dear heart!  To-day I shall be with you.  Yes, I find my happiness is in being loved by you.  I kiss you a thousand times!  Good-bye.  I love you for ever.”  In another letter we read, “Yes, dear heart, I desire so ardently to be with you—­not in spirit, my thoughts are ever with you, but bodily—­that nothing can calm my impatience.  Good-bye, my darling.  I kiss you many and many times with all my heart.”  The curious may read at the French Record Office many of these letters written in a bold, flowing hand by de Cosse in the hey-day of his love.  The paper is time-stained, the ink is faded; but each sentence still palpitates with the passion that inspired it a century and a quarter ago.

And with this great love came new honours for de Cosse.  His father’s death made him Duc de Brissac, head of one of the greatest houses in France, owner of vast estates.  He was appointed Governor of Paris and Colonel of the King’s own body-guard.  He had, in fact, risen to a perilous eminence; for the clouds of the great Revolution were already massing in the sky, and the sans-culotte crowds were straining to be at the throats of the cursed “aristos,” and to hurl Louis from his throne.  Brissac (as we must now call him) was thus an object of special hatred, as of splendour, standing out so prominently as representative of the hated noblesse.

Other nobles, fearful of the breaking of the storm, were flying in droves to seek safety in England and elsewhere.  But when the Governor of Paris was urged to fly, he answered proudly, “Certainly not.  I shall act according to my duty to my ancestors and myself.”  And, heedless of his life, he clung to his duty and his honour, presenting a smiling face to the scowls of hatred and envy, and spending blissful hours at Lucienne with the woman he loved.

Nor was she any less conscious of her danger, or less indifferent to it.  She also had become a target of hatred and scarcely veiled threats.  Watchful eyes marked every coming and going of Brissac’s messengers with their missives of love; it was discovered that Brissac’s aide-de-camp, whose life they sought, was in hiding in her house; that she was supplying the noble emigrants with money.  The climax was reached when she boldly advertised a reward of two thousand louis for a clue to the jewellery of which burglars had robbed her—­jewels of which she published a long and dazzling list, thus bringing to memory the days when the late King had squandered his ill-gotten gold on her.

The Duc, at last alarmed for her—­never for himself—­begged her either to escape, or, as he wrote, to “come quickly, my darling, and take every precaution for your valuables, if you have any left.  Yes, come, and your beauty, your kindness and magnanimity.  I am ashamed of it, but I feel weaker than you.  How should I feel otherwise for the one I love best?”

But already the hour for flight had passed.  The passions of the mob were breaking down the barriers that were now too weak to hold them in check; the Paris streets had their first baptism of blood, prelude to the deluge to follow; hideous, fierce-eyed crowds were clamouring at the gates of Versailles; and de Brissac was soon on his way, a prisoner, to Orleans.