Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/154

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134
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

boat chased him for two hours till dusk, but then bore away. The car sank inch by inch, and Money, resigned to the fate of Pilate de Rozier, was up to his breast in the water, when, shortly before midnight, a revenue cutter rescued him, so weak that he had to be lifted on board. "Any man with less strength than myself," says Money,[1] "must have perished."

Richard Twiss, who had visited Voltaire at Ferney, and had employed Rousseau in copying music, had also repaired to Paris in July 1792. He was a clever violinist and chess-player, and had lost much money in a scheme of making paper from straw. So little did he foresee the impending horrors that he intended spending several years in France. He expected indeed a counter-revolution. On the capture of the Tuileries he went out at three in the afternoon and found all quiet, but the gardens were strewn with corpses of Swiss, which were being stripped and mutilated by ruffians of both sexes.

I have left to the last the Abbe Edgeworth, and this for two reasons. His flight was latest in date, and he had virtually become a Frenchman, yet he cannot be omitted from a book on Englishmen in the French Revolution. It is, moreover, well to clear up misconceptions as to his relations with the

  1. Copy of newspaper cutting (at back of an old picture of the balloon at sea, belonging to Mr. J, J. Colman, M.P.) furnished me by Mr. E. A. Tillett, of Norwich.