hereditary race of judicial officers, which is a peculiarity of French official life. Young Pasquier, born in 1767, seemed destined to follow in the same track as his ancestors to pass from office to office, from salary to salary through all the well-ordered gradations which belong to such a class. But even in his early years he found himself surrounded by the signs of the coming strife. His mother, for instance, had passed, like other people, under the spell of the new gospel, preached by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Like so many other great ladies of the period, she had succeeded in obtaining an interview with that rather morose and shy philosopher by bringing him some music to copy, and it was under the influence of Rousseau that young Pasquier, while still an infant, was sent half naked into the garden of the Tuileries; "the result of this system," is his melancholy comment, "was to make me one of the most chilly of mortals."
II.
THE OLD REGIME.
The Pasquiers had been able to acquire a pleasant country place near Le Mans, and we have several delightful glimpses of their career of prosperous public employment, and of what the old life of the provinces used to be before the storm burst. For instance, here is a very instructive picture of that
