Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/243

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IN THE PROVINCES.
223

Les Andelys, in Normandy;[1] and Milne, a machine maker pensioned by the monarchy, who died at Paris in 1804, not figure in the list of prisoners. O'Reilly, described as a Scotchman, probably the ex-Benedictine who, in January 1792, proposed grinding corn by compressed air, achieved a reputation in Paris for his engraving on glass. French and Johnston, wine-merchants at Bordeaux, seem likewise to have continued their business operations. But Didot's paper-mills at Essonnes, Corbeil, where assignats were made, was visited by Camille Desmoulins and district commissaries, in October 1793, for the purpose of arresting several English employed there. Jules Didot explained that his wife, Maria Gamble, was English; she had been governess to his children in his first wife's lifetime. She was perhaps the "citoyenne Didot mêre," to whom Bernardin de St. Pierre wrote in January 1800, saying that his son Paul was much grown, was anxious to embrace his dear Virginie (Didot) and would accompany his father to Essonnes next décadi. Sykes, optician and agent for Wedgwood's pottery, gave up the Palais Royal shop which commanded so good a view of revolutionary jubilations and horrors, and in 1792 erected a cotton mill at St. Rémy, not far from Dreux, his only child marrying

  1. Gay, a Scotchman, secretary to the Jacobin Club in that town, a jovial but rapacious fellow, was probably his foreman. See Contemporary Review, 1867.