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Scraps from the unpublished Manuscripts of a Traveller, in France, 

 Germany Hungary, and Italy. 



NORMANDY. ROUEN. EVRKUX, 



THE next day we visited the Musee or Picture Gallery, which contains a 

 few of the works of Italian and Flemish masters, and many of the modern 

 French school, worthy of attention. The object which engaged the greatest 

 share of my notice was the keeper of the gallery, a thin spare man of advanced 

 age, trembling in every joint; his hair, white as snow, tied behind in a long 

 small queue, bespeaking, together with his habiliments a ci-devant militaire. 

 On my enquiring if his trembling proceeded from cold, or from a paralytic 

 affection, a smile for a moment lighted up his venerable features, and he 

 replied, in a mild, subdued tone: " Non, Monsieur; I caught this disorder 

 under the axe of the guillotine ; and, as I perceive your curiosity is excited, if 

 you will do me the honour to take a chair, pendant que je vous conte V affaire, 

 I shall be most ..appy to gratify it. Handing chairs to myself and friends, 

 and taking a seat respectfully in front of us, he related the following extraor- 

 dinary story : 



" I was a yards de corps in the service of that excellent sovereign and 

 martyr, Louis XVI. ; and I had the honour of being continually near his 

 person until the fatal 10th of August, when, by almost a miracle, I escaped 

 the massacre of his faithful adherents at the Tuileries, and lived concealed 

 with a friend at Paris till I heard of the determination of the Convention to 

 bring my revered master to trial. Determined to risk my own life in an 

 attempt to save his, I disguised myself one evening and joined a party of 

 royalists who had formed a plan to carry off the king from the temple, 

 and I was appointed by them to convey to him a large sum of money to bribe 

 his keepers to favour his escape. Our attempt would, probably, have been 

 attended with success, had not the imprudence of some over-zealous friends 

 defeated it. Suffice it to say, that the Commissaire, whom we thought 

 we had succeeded in corrupting, betrayed us on the very day the 

 guard of the prisoner was confided to him; and the tocsin announced 

 throughout Paris that Louis was about to escape, The police were on the 

 alert to arrest the conspirators, and I with difficulty made my escape to a 

 country-house about twenty leagues from the capital, where I remained in 

 constant terror of apprehension, till the death of my sovereign and his queen 

 had placed the factions which governed France at variance with each other, 

 and furnished daily fresh victims to the now permanent guillotine. Tired of 

 my uneasy position in the country, I determined on returning at all risks to 

 Paris; and, disguised as a porter, I lived there undiscovered till a few days 

 previous to the overthrow of Robespierre. I was then arrested, and conveyed 



