Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

M. de La Tour d'Azyr was seen no more in the Manège -- or indeed in Paris at all -- throughout all the months that the National Assembly remained in session to complete its work of providing France with a Constitution. After all, though the wound to his body had been comparatively slight, the wound to such a pride as his had been all but mortal.

The rumour ran that he had emigrated. But that was only half the truth. The whole of it was that he had joined that group of noble travellers who came and went between the Tuileries and the headquarters of the émigrés at Coblentz. He became, in short, a member of the royalist secret service that in the end was to bring down the monarchy in ruins.