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Book, page 311 / 491 was construed into a state crime of the most horrible nature. In a declamatory tone, Tracassier reminded his fellow-citizens, that in the ancient Grecian times of virtuous republicanism (times of which France ought to show herself emulous), an Athenian child was condemned to death for having made a plaything of a fragment of the gilding that had fallen from a public statue. The orator, for the reward of his eloquence, obtained an order to seize every thing in Mad. de Fleury's school-house, and to throw the nun into prison. CHAPTER IX. "Who now will guard bewilder'd youth Safe from the fierce assault of hostile rage?-- Such war can Virtue wage?" At the very moment when this order was going to be put in execution, Mad. de Fleury was sitting in the midst of the children, listening to Babet, who was reading AEsop's fable of _The old man and his sons_. Whilst her sister was reading, Victoire collected a number of twigs from the garden: she had just tied them together; and was going, by Sister Frances' desire, to let her companions try if they could break the bundle, when the attention of the moral of the fable was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman, whose countenance expressed the utmost terror and haste, to tell what she had not breath to utter. To Mad. de Fleury she was a stranger; but the children immediately recollected her to be the _chestnut woman_, to whom Babet had some years ago restored certain purloined chestnuts. "Fly!" said she, the moment she had breath to speak: "Fly!--they are coming to seize every thing here--carry off what you can--make haste--make haste!--I came through a by-street. A man was eating chestnuts at my stall, and I saw him show one that was with him the order from Citoyen Tracassier. They'll be here in five minutes--quick!--quick!--You, in particular," continued she, turning to the nun, "else you'll be in prison." At these words, the children, who had clung round Sister Frances, loosed their hold, exclaiming, "Go! go quick: but where?
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