Trampling of the Lilies by Rafael Sabatini

It was spring at Bellecour -- the spring of 1789, a short three months before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and make them realize that these new philosophies, which so long they have derided, were by no means the idle vapors they had deemed them. The events that fateful spring morning sealed M. la Boulaye's fate. It started with an idyll in the garden with the object of his heart's desire; it ended when the Marquis found them in the garden. The Marquis came slowly forward, his angrily inquiring glance wandering from his daughter to M. la Boulaye. At last he said -- "Well?" he demanded. "What is the matter?" "It is nothing," his daughter answered him. "A trifling affair 'twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you." "It is not nothing, my lord," cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating oddly. "It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it." He was in a very daring mood that morning. The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate grunt came from his thick lips. "Canaille!" he exclaimed, through set teeth. "Can you have presumed so far?" He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted.

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