II.
While the crowd was dispersing, Doctor Satiani stole to his office, which was a short distance from the ‘’Hôtel de Ville’’. He had not been frightened at the possibility of being beaten by the men who had taken offense at his words. Fear was hardly an ingredient in his character. He had had too many disappointments to care much what became of him; and he had been further schooled by the sight of bravery and death on more than one battle-field. Though bearing an Italian name, his ancestors had been French for many generations,
Born in 1780, of noble blood, the son of a viscount, he had lived through a variety of scenes not to be found in the same number of years in any other period of history. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was living in the manner of a prince with his parents near Versailles.
