Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/239

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IN THE PROVINCES.
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ments for fear of being overheard by "Cromwell." They were eventually transferred to the ground floor, and from their windows they witnessed the demolition of a Calvary. The cross on the summit of the citadel had given place to a red cap, and on this being carried away by a storm, Good Friday was chosen for placing a second cap. On the 24th November 1794, reduced to twenty-six by some escapes, they were taken back to Douai, were lodged in the Irish seminary, and after a while were allowed to walk about the town.

In 1802, John Philip Kerable passed through Douai. When sent there as a youth, his father intended him for the priesthood, but he returned to England before he was twenty, and took to the stage. He found his old college in indescribable desolation, and had not the heart to go up to the room occupied by him nearly thirty years before. In 1863 a search was made for church plate, vestments, and relics buried by the monks just before quitting it in 1793. Father Penswick, the only surviving witness (he died the following year, at the age of eighty-six), had given directions where to search, and the plate and vestments were found, but the relics, including Thomas à Becket's shirt and St. Charles Borromeo's barretta, could not be discovered. The portrait of Mary Stuart, given by Elizabeth Curie to the Scotch college at Douai, was more fortunate. Rolled up and concealed in a