CHAPTER VIII
We have made our readers acquainted with some variety in character and nations, in introducing the most important personages of this legend to their notice: but, in order to establish the fidelity of our narrative, we will briefly attempt to explain the "why and wherefore" of so motley a dramatis personæ.
Europe was, at the period of our tale, in the commencement of that mighty commotion which afterwards shook her political institutions to their centre. Louis the Sixteenth had been beheaded, and a nation, once esteemed the most refined amongst the civilized people of the world, was changing her character, and substituting cruelty for mercy, and subtlety and ferocity for magnanimity and courage. Thousands of Frenchmen were compelled to seek protection in distant lands. Among the crowds who fled from France and her islands, to the United Slates of America, was the gentleman whom we have already mentioned as Monsieur Le Quoi. He had been recommended to the favour of Judge Temple, by the head of an eminent mercantile house in New-York, with
