First Sentence

"A FRENCH noble, who at the outbreak of the Revolution had gleefully renounced his title and privileges, thrown himself heart and soul into the Revolutionary movement, and led Revolutionary armies to victory, wrote while confined in the Conciergerie, in the year 1794, to his wife: Judging from the species of interrogatory to which, with a great number of prisoners, I have been subjected to-day, I perceive that I am the victim of the vile calumnies of certain aristocratic fellow prisoners who call themselves patriots."