Yule-Tide Yarns

The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
The quartermaster fired his two pistols, and the man fell.
Page 181.

The Alert , a handsome schooner of some 200 tons burden, was in April 1793 cruising along the southern shore of France. She had been captured a fortnight before by his Majesty's frigate Tartar , a week after the declaration of war between France and England. As she was a very fast vessel, the captain of the Tartar had placed thirty men on board her, under the command of his senior midshipman, Vignerolles, in order that he might gather news of the movements of any hostile craft from Toulon or Marseilles, and pick up any French merchantmen returning from abroad and ignorant that war had begun. The young commander was standing on the quarter-deck with his glass fixed upon a large château standing some four miles back from the sea on a lofty eminence.
The baron must be mad, he said, as he lowered the glass, to remain there with his wife and two daughters, when he might long ago have managed to escape with them across the frontier into Italy. If he is so pig-headed as to determine to stop there himself, and have his head chopped off by the guillotine, he might at least have sent them to a place of safety. I have been brought up to admire the French nobles, but upon my word, if they are all like him they well deserve the fate that is falling upon them. Of course those who emigrate have their estates forfeited, but it is a good deal better to lose your estate than your estate and head also.
Vignerolles belonged to an old Huguenot family which had emigrated to England upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes. They had sold their property, and possessed considerable means when they arrived in England. Chiefly for the sake of assisting the many exiles of their religion, they had joined two or three others in erecting a silk manufactory at Spitalfields. As time went on, the heirs of those who had joined them in the enterprise had gone out of it, and the de Vignerolles of the time had become sole proprietor of the silk factory. It had gone down from father to son in unbroken succession. The younger sons had gone out into the world and made their ways in other directions, but it had become a tradition that the eldest son should take the business, which was now a very flourishing one. They had dropped the French prefix, and now simply called themselves Vignerolles. Their branch of the family had been the younger one. The Barons de Vignerolles had remained Catholics, and had possessed their wide estates in peace, being among the largest landowners in Provence. The connection between the two branches had been always maintained, and from time to time members of the English branch went out for a visit to the ancestral château, where they were always hospitably entertained; the fact that they had gone into trade, which would have been considered a terrible disgrace in France, being condoned on the ground that being among a nation of traders it was only natural they should do as their neighbours did.