"A la lanterne les aristos! A la lanterne les aristos!" was the cry that roused Suzanne from her meditations. The last three years had been ones of terror for the de Tournai family, as they watched their class and kinsmen fall before the fury of the mobs of Paris. The epidemic was spreading across the face of France, as liberty, equality, and fraternity sought to stomp out the nobles of that beautiful, tragic kingdom. It was only that morning that M. le Comte de Tournai de Basserive and his lady wife discovered that they, and their children, had been placed on the list of "suspected persons," which meant that their trial and death were in but a matter of days, perhaps mere hours.

Fear that it was the blood of her family that the grim rabble called for, Suzanne slipped quietly to a window and peered out. To see the crowd make sport of a young Duc and his terrified wife. She recognized the man from some long forgotten social gathering, a passing face in the crowd. Now he was to meet his end at the hands of a pack of filthy murders. Suzanne turned away. How long would it be until her family was engulfed by that rabble? She bit her thumb nervously, and ran downstairs to her mother.

The old Comtess stood rigid, erect, and defiant, listening intently, with one hand upon a table beating an impatient tattoo. In a moment her daughter rushed in and threw her delicate arms around the older woman's neck. "They're not here for us!" she cried as she held on to her mother.

The comtess pulled her daughter away and regarded her sternly, but affectionately. Suzanne was scarcely more than a child, and in all likelihood she would never bloom into full maturity. The young woman bore a dainty, girlish figure, childlike and pathetic in its look of fatigue and of sorrow. Had not this hideous revolution broken loose, in all likelihood she would be selecting a suitor from amongst the most respected names of France. Suzanne's large, brown eyes, full of tears, looked up to those of her mother conveying the fear and horror that was taking place outside their very door.

The comtess smoothed back a stray lock of her daughter's hair, "Whatever happens, my darling Suzanne, remember who you are! Remember the blood that courses through your veins. We must meet our destiny with the pride and honor of our ancestry." The comptess's voice was musical and low. There was a great deal of calm, dignity, and of much suffering nobly endured marked in the handsome, aristocratic face, with its wealth of snowy-white hair dressed high above the forehead, after the fashion of the times. "God, alone holds our fate in his hands."