that she should never see her again. The
father went with her to Granville. On the
way the only relief he had was caring for her
comfort in her strange imprisonment. He
stroked her cheeks and smoothed her hair
with his labour-hardened fingers, and coaxed
her to eat the food her mother had prepared.
In the evening her feet were cold; he took
off his warm flannel jacket to wrap them in.
Whether it was that chill coming on the heat
of the excited day, or whether the fatigue
and grief broke down the old man utterly, no
one can say. The child Magdalen was safely
extricated from her hiding-place at the Quai
at Granville, and smuggled on board of the
fishing-smack, with her great chest of clothes,
and half-collected trousseau; the captain took
her safe to Jersey, and willing friends
received her eventually in London. But the
father—moaning to himself, "If I am
bereaved of my children I am bereaved," saying
that pitiful sentence over and over again, as
if the repetition could charm away the deep
sense of woe—went home, and took to his
bed, and died; nor did the mother remain
long after him.

One of these Lefebvre sons was the
grandfather of the Duke of Dantzic, one of
Napoleon's marshals. The little daughter's
descendants, though not very numerous, are
scattered over England; and one of them, as
I have said, is the lady who told me this, and
many other particulars relating to the exiled
Huguenots.

At first the rigorous decrees of the Revocation
were principally enforced against the
ministers of religion. They were all required
to leave Paris at forty-eight hours' notice,
under severe penalties for disobedience. Some
of the most distinguished among them were
ignominiously forced to leave the country;
but the expulsion of these ministers was
followed by the emigration of the more faithful
among their people. In Languedoc this was
especially the case; whole congregations
followed their pastors; and France was being
rapidly drained of the more thoughtful and
intelligent of the Huguenots (who, as a
people, had distinguished themselves in
manufacture and commerce,) when the King's
minister took the alarm, and prohibited
emigration, under pain of imprisonment for life;
imprisonment for life, including abandonment
to the tender mercies of the priests. Here
again I may relate an anecdote told me by
my friend:—A husband and wife attempted
to escape separately from some town in
Brittany; the wife succeeded, and reached
England, where she anxiously awaited her
husband. The husband was arrested in the
attempt, and imprisoned. The priest alone
was allowed to visit him; and, after vainly
using argument to endeavour to persuade him
to renounce his obnoxious religion, the priest,
with cruel zeal, had recourse to physical
torture. There was a room in the prison with
an iron floor, and no seat, nor means of support
or rest; into this room the poor
Huguenot was introduced. The iron flooring
was gradually heated (one remembers the
gouty gentleman whose cure was effected by
a similar process in " Sandford and Merton;"
but there the heat was not carried up to
torture, as it was in the Huguenot's case); still
the brave man was faithful. The process was
repeated; all in vain. The flesh on the soles
of his feet was burnt off, and he was a cripple
for life; but, cripple or sound, dead or alive,
a Huguenot he remained. And by and bye,
they grew weary of their useless cruelty, and
the poor man was allowed to hobble about on
crutches. How it was that he obtained his
liberty at last, my informant could not tell.
He only knew that, after years of imprisonment
and torture, a poor grey cripple was
seen wandering about the streets of London,
making vain inquiries for his wife in his
broken English, as little understood by most
as the Moorish maiden's cry for " Gilbert,
Gilbert." Some one at last directed him to
a coffee-house near Soho Square, kept by
an emigrant, who thrived upon the art,
even then national, of making good coffee.
It was the resort of the Huguenots, many
of whom by this time had turned their
intelligence to good account in busy commercial
England.

To this coffee-house the poor cripple hied
himself; but no one knew of his wife; she
might be alive, or she might be dead; it
seemed as if her name had vanished from the
earth. In the corner sat a pedlar listening
to everything, but saying nothing. He had
come to London to lay in a stock of wares
for his rounds. Now the three harbours of
the French emigrants were Norwich, where
they established the manufacture of Norwich
crape; Spitalfields in London, where they
embarked in the silk-trade; and Canterbury,
where a colony of them carried on one or two
delicate employments, such as jewellery, wax-
bleaching, &c. The pedlar took Canterbury
in his way, and sought among the French
residents for a woman who might correspond
to the missing wife. She was there, earning
her livelihood as a milliner, and believing her
husband to be either a galley-slave, or dead
long since in some of the terrible prisons.
But, on hearing the pedlar's tale, she set
off at once to London, and found her poor
crippled husband, who lived many years
afterwards in Canterbury, supported by his
wife's exertions.

Another Huguenot couple determined to
emigrate. They could disguise themselves;
but their baby? If they were seen passing
through the gates of the town in which they
lived with a child, they would instantly be
arrested, suspected Huguenots as they were.
Their expedient was to wrap the baby into a
formless bundle; to one end of which was
attached a string; and then, taking advantage
of the deep gutter which runs in the
centre of so many old streets in French towns