' He found it 'not a bit of
fun sitting boxed up in the house four days almost. . . I was the
only GENTLEMAN to four ladies, and didn't they keep me in order! I
did not dare to show my face at a window, for fear of catching a
stray ball or being forced to enter the National Guard; [for] they
would have it I was a man full-grown, French, and every way fit to
fight. And my mamma was as bad as any of them; she that told me I
was a coward last time if I stayed in the house a quarter of an
hour! But I drew, examined the pistols, of which I found lots with
caps, powder, and ball, while sometimes murderous intentions of
killing a dozen insurgents and dying violently overpowered by
numbers. . . . .' We may drop this sentence here: under the
conduct of its boyish writer, it was to reach no legitimate end.
Four days of such a discipline had cured the family of Paris; the
same year Fleeming was to write, in answer apparently to a question
of Frank Scott's, 'I could find no national game in France but
revolutions'; and the witticism was justified in their experience.
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