— 188 — 



REMINISCENCES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION; '89. 



Ill 



The hold retained by the De Gaspe Memoirs on the 

 reading public is mainly due to the valuable and much 

 needed light shed by them on the social aspect of a 

 remote, rather misty period in Canadian annals. Unques- 

 tionably the genial seignior of St. Jean Port-Joly, has 

 invested with lasting charm this record of the stormy 

 days of yore. His facile pen, aided by his marvellous 

 memory and social position, brings one face to face with 

 contemporaries of note, noteworthy men and women 

 who existed one hundred years ago. We fancy we see 

 them in flesh and blood ; we watch them gracefully or 

 sorrowfully moving through the maze of the all-per- 

 meating, overpouring drama of the time ; some of them 

 unwilling, terrorised contemporaries of the appalling- 

 scenes, of blood proscription and anguish organized in 

 France by Fouquier-Tinville and Eobespierre. Occasion- 

 ally, our old friend tries his hand at reproducing on the 

 canvass a brief sketch of some distinguished French 

 dmigrds : such as that of the devoted priests, the Abbe* 

 de Colonne, brother to the French Minister of State, or 

 the Abbe* Desjardins, both glad to escape the guillotine, 

 and find life secure under the segis of British power at 

 Quebec ; sueing from a protestant monarch, hesitatingly 

 but successfully, for a boon denied to them in their own 

 favored, but distracted and frenzied country, the right 

 to worship their maker according to their own lights ; 

 sometimes, one is called on to greet an eminent person- 

 age, happy to exchange the pomp and show of the old 

 world for a secure Canadian home. 



At page 88, M. de Gaspe introduces us, as follows, to 

 a village celebrity, still well remembered, in the settle- 



