* (Note of the Editor.) Uneasy at not seeing my mother arrive, I took horse to go and meet her, in order to soften as much as was in my power, the news which she had to learn upon her return; but I lost myself like her, in the uniform plains of the Vendomois, and it was only in the middle of the night that a fortunate chance conducted me to the gate of the chateau where the rites of hospitality had been given to her. I caused M. de Montmorency to be awakened, and after having informed him of this new instance of the persecution which the imperial police directed against my mother, I set off again to finish putting her papers in safety, leaving to M. de Montmorency the charge of preparing her for the new blow with which she was threatened.

* Miss Randall.

The prefect of Loir and Cher came to require the delivery of my manuscript: I gave him, merely to gain time, a rough copy which remained with me, and with which he was satisfied. I have learned that he was extremely ill-treated a few months afterwards, to punish him for having shewn me some attention: and the chagrin he felt at having incurred the disgrace of the emperor, was, it is said, one of the causes of the illness which carried him off in the prime of life. Unfortunate country, where the circumstances are such, that a man of his understanding and talent should sink under the chagrin of disgrace!

I saw in the papers, that some American vessels had arrived in the ports of the Channel, and I determined to make use of my passport for America, in the hope that it would be possible to touch at an English port. At all events I required some days to prepare for this voyage, and I was obliged to address myself to the minister of police to ask for that indulgence. It has been already seen that the custom of the French government is to order women, as well as soldiers, to depart within twenty-four hours. Here follows the minister's reply: it is curious to observe his style*.

* (Note of the Editor.) This is the same letter which was printed in the Preface to Germany,

"GENERAL POLICE. MINISTER'S CABINET. Paris, 3d October, 1810.

"I have received the letter, madam, which you did me the honor to write to me. Your son will have informed you that I saw no impropriety in your delaying your departure for seven or eight days: I hope they will be sufficient for the arrangements which you have yet to make, as I cannot grant you any more.

"You must not seek for the cause of the order which I have signified to you, in the silence which you have observed with regard to the emperor in your last work; that would be a great mistake; he could find no place there which was worthy of him; but your exile is a natural consequence of the line of conduct you have constantly pursued for several years past. It has appeared to me that the air of this country did not at all agree with you, and we are not yet reduced to seek for models in the nations whom you admire.

"Your last work is not at all French; it is by my orders that the impression has been seized. I regret the loss which it will occasion to the bookseller; but it is not possible for me to allow it to appear.

"You know, madam, that you would not have been permitted to quit Coppet but for the desire you had expressed to go to America. If my predecessor allowed you to reside in the department of Loir and Cher, you had no reason to look upon this license as any revocation of the arrangements which had been fixed with regard to you. At present you compel me to make them be strictly executed; for this you have no one to blame but yourself.

"I have signified to M. Corbigny* to look to the punctual execution of the order I have given him, as soon as the term I grant you is expired.

* Prefect of Loir and Cher.

"I regret extremely, madam, that you have forced me to begin my correspondence with you by an act of severity; it would have been much more agreeable to me to have only had to offer you the assurance of the high consideration with which I have the honor to be, madam,

"Your most humble, and most obedient servant, Signed the DUKE of ROVIGO.

"P. S, I have reasons, madam, for mentioning to you that the ports of Lorient, La Rochelle, Bourdeaux, and Rochefort, are the only ones in which you can embark. I request you to let me know which of them you select*."

* This postscript is easily understood; its object was to prevent me from going to England.

The stale hypocrisy with which I was told that the air of this country did not agree with me, and the denial of the real cause of the suppression of my book, are worthy of remark. In fact, the minister of police had shown more frankness in expressing himself verbally respecting me: he asked, why I never named the emperor or the army in my work on Germany? On its being objected that the work being purely literary, I could not well have introduced such subjects, "Do you think," then replied the minister, "that we have made war for eighteen years in Germany, and that a person of such celebrity should print a book upon it, without saying a word about us? This book shall be destroyed, and the author deserves to be sent to Vincennes."

On receiving the letter of the minister of police, I paid no attention to any part but that passage of it which interdicted me the ports of the Channel. I had already learned, that suspecting my intention of going to England, they would endeavour to prevent me. This new mortification was really above my strength to bear; on quitting my native country, I must go to that of my adoption; in banishing myself from the friends of my whole life, I required at least to find those friends of whatever is good and noble, with whom, without knowing them personally, the soul always sympathises. I saw at once all that supported my imagination crumbling to pieces; for a moment longer I would have embarked on board any vessel bound for America, in the hope of her being captured on her passage; but I was too much shaken to decide at once on so strong a resolution; and as the two alternatives of America and Coppet were the only ones that were left me, I determined on accepting the latter; for a profound sentiment always attracted me to Coppet, in spite of the disagreeables I was there subjected to.

My two sons both endeavoured to see the emperor at Fontainbleau, where he then was; they were told they would be arrested if they remained there; a fortiori, I was interdicted from going to it myself. I was obliged to return into Switzerland from Blois, where I was, without approaching Paris nearer than forty leagues. The minister of police had given notice, in corsair terms, that at thirty-eight leagues I was a good prize. In this manner, when the emperor exercises the arbitrary power of banishment, neither the exiled persons, nor their friends, nor even their children, can reach his presence to plead the cause of the unfortunates who are thus torn from the objects of their affection and their habits; and these sentences of exile, which are now irrevocable, particularly where women are the objects, and which the emperor himself has rightly termed proscriptions, are pronounced without the possibility of making any justification be heard, supposing always that the crime of having displeased the emperor admits of any.

Although the forty leagues were ordered me, I was necessitated to pass through Orleans, a very dull town, but inhabited by several very pious ladies, who had retired thither for an asylum. In walking about the town on foot, I stopped before the monument erected to the memory of Joan of Arc: certainly, thought I to myself, when she delivered France from the power of the English, that same France was much more free, much more France than it is at present. One feels a singular sensation in wandering through a town, where you neither know, nor are known to a soul. I felt a kind of bitter enjoyment in picturing to myself my isolated situation in its fullest extent, and in still looking at that France which I was about to quit, perhaps for ever, without speaking to a person, or being diverted from the impression which the country itself made upon me. Occasionally persons passing stopped to look at me, from the circumstance I suppose of my countenance having, in spite of me, an expression of grief; but they soon went on again, as it is long since mankind have been accustomed to witness persons suffering.

At fifty leagues from the Swiss frontier, France is bristled with citadels, houses of detention, and towns serving as prisons; and every where you see nothing but individuals deprived of their liberty by the will of one man, conscripts of misfortune, all chained at a distance from the places where they would have wished to live. At Dijon, some Spanish prisoners, who had refused to take the oath, regularly came every day to the market place to feel the sun at noon, as they then regarded him rather as their countryman; they wrapt themselves up in a mantle, frequently in rags, but which they knew how to wear with grace, and they gloried in their misery, as it arose from their boldness; they hugged themselves in their sufferings, as associating them with the misfortunes of their intrepid country. They were sometimes seen going into a coffee house, solely to read the newspaper, in order to penetrate the fate of their friends through the lies of their enemies; their countenances were then immoveable, but not without expression, exhibiting strength under the command of their will. Farther on, at Auxonne, was the residence of the English prisoners, who had the day before saved from fire, one of the houses of the town where they were kept confined. At Besancon, there were more Spaniards. Among the French exiles to be met with in every part of France, an angelic creature inhabited the citadel of Besancon, in order not to quit her father. For a long period, and amidst every sort of danger, Mademoiselle de Saint Simon shared the fortunes of him who had given her birth.

At the entrance of Switzerland, on the top of the mountains which separate it from France, you see the castle of Joux, in which prisoners of state are detained, whose names frequently never reach the ear of their relations. In this prison Toussaint Louverture actually perished of cold; he deserved his fate on account of his cruelty, but the emperor had the least right to inflict it upon him, as he had engaged to guarantee to him his life and liberty. I passed a day at the foot of this castle, during very dreadful weather, and I could not help thinking of this negro transported all at once into the Alps, and to whom this residence was the hell of ice; I thought of the more noble beings, who had been shut up there, of those who were still groaning in it, and I said to myself also that if I was there, I should never quit it with life. It is impossible to convey an idea to the small number of free nations which remain upon the earth, of that absence of all security, the habitual state of the human creatures who live under the empire of Napoleon. In other despotic governments there are laws, and customs, and a religion, which the sovereign never infringes, however absolute he may be; but in France, and in Europe France, as every thing is new, the past can be no guarantee, and every thing may be feared as well as hoped according as you serve, or not, the interests of the man who dares to propose himself, as the sole object of the existence of the whole human race.



CHAPTER 2.

Return to Coppet.—Different persecutions.

In returning to Coppet, dragging my wing like the pigeon in Lafontaine, I saw the rainbow rise over my father's house; I dared take my part in this token of the covenant; there had been nothing in my sorrowful journey to prevent me from aspiring to it. I was then almost resigned to living in this chateau, renouncing the idea of ever publishing more on any subject; but it was at least necessary, in making the sacrifice of talents, which I flattered myself with possessing, to find happiness in my affections, and this is the manner in which my private life was arranged, after having stript me of my literary existence.

The first order received by the prefect of Geneva, was to intimate to my two sons, that they were interdicted going into France without a new permission of the police. This was to punish them for having wished to speak to Bonaparte in favor of their mother. Thus the morality of the present government is to loosen family ties, in order to substitute in all cases the emperor's will. Several generals have been mentioned as declaring, that if Napoleon ordered them to throw their wives and children into the river, they would not hesitate to obey him. The translation of this is, that they prefer the money which the emperor gives them, to the family which they have from nature. There are many instances of this way of thinking, but there are few who would have impudence enough to give utterance to it. I felt a mortal grief at seeing for the first time my situation bear upon my sons, scarcely entered into life. We feel ourselves very firm in our own conduct, when it is founded on sincere conviction; but when others begin to suffer on our account, it is almost impossible to keep from reproaching ourselves. Both my sons, however, most generously diverted this feeling from me, and we supported each other mutually by the recollection of my father.

A few days afterwards the prefect of Geneva wrote me a second letter, to require me, in the name of the minister of police, to deliver up the proof sheets of my book which were still in my hands; the minister knew exactly the number I had sent and kept, and his spies had done their duty well. In my answer, I gave him the satisfaction of admitting that he had been correctly informed; but I told him at the same time that this copy was not in Switzerland, and that I neither could nor would give it up. I added, however, that I would engage never to have it printed on the Continent, and I had no great merit in making this promise, for what Continental government would then have suffered the publication of any book forbidden, by the emperor?

A short time afterwards, the prefect of Geneva* was dismissed, and it was generally believed on my account; he was one of my friends, yet he had not deviated one iota from the orders he had received: although he was one of the most honorable and enlightened men in France, his principles led him to the scrupulous obedience of the government, whose servant he was; but no ambitious view, or personal calculation gave him the zeal required. It was another great source of chagrin to be, or to be regarded as being, the cause of the dismissal of such a man. He was generally regretted in his department, and from the moment it was believed that I was the cause of his disgrace, all who had any pretensions to places avoided my house as they would the most fatal contagion. There still remained to me, however at Geneva, more friends than any other provincial town in France could have offered me; for the inheritance of liberty has left in that city much generous feeling; but it is impossible to have an idea of the anxiety one feels, when one is afraid of compromising those who come to visit you. I made a point of getting the most exact information of all the relations of any lady before I invited her; for if she had only a cousin who wanted a place, or had one, it was demanding an act of Roman heroism to expect her to come and dine with me; At last, in the month of March 1811, a new prefect arrived from Paris. He was a man admirably well adapted to the reigning system: that is to say, having a very general acquaintance with facts, coupled with a total absence of principles in matters of government; calling every fixed rule mere abstraction, and placing his conscience in devotion to the reigning power. The first time I saw him, he told me that talents like mine were made to celebrate the emperor, who was a subject well worthy of the kind of enthusiasm which I had shown in Corinna. I gave him for answer, that persecuted as I was by the emperor, any thing like praise of him coming from me, would have the air of a petition, and that I was persuaded that the emperor himself would find my eulogiums very ridiculous under such circumstances. He combatted this opinion very strongly: he returned to my house several times to beg me, in the name of my own interest, as he styled it, to write something in favor of the emperor, were it but a sheet of four pages; that would be sufficient, he assured me, to put an end to all the disagreeables I suffered. He repeated what he told me to every person of my acquaintance. Finally, one day he came to propose to me to celebrate in verse the birth of the king of Rome; I told him, laughing, that I had not a single idea on the subject, and that I should confine myself to wishes for his having a good nurse. This joke put an end to the prefect's negociations with me, upon the necessity of my writing in favor of the present government.

* M. de Barante, father of M. Prosper de Barante, member of the * Chamber of Peers.

A short time afterwards the physicians ordered my youngest son the baths of Aix, in Savoy, at twenty leagues from Coppet. I chose the early part of May to go there, a time of the year when the waters are quite deserted. I gave the prefect notice of this little journey, and went to shut myself up in a kind of village, where there was not at the time a single person of my acquaintance. I had hardly been there ten days, before a courier arrived from the prefect of Geneva to order me to return. The prefect of Mont-Blanc, in whose department I was, was also afraid lest I should leave Aix to go to England, as he said, to write against the emperor; and although London was not very near to Aix in Savoy, he sent his gendarmes every where about, to forbid my being furnished with post horses on the road. I am at present tempted to laugh at all this prefectorial activity against a poor thing like myself; but at that time the very sight of a gendarme was enough to make me die with fright. I was always alarmed lest from a banishment so rigorous the change might shortly be to a prison, which was to me more terrible than death itself. I knew that if I was once arrested, that if this eclat were once got over, the emperor would not allow himself again to be spoken to about me, even if any one had the courage to do so; which was not very probable at that court, where terror was the prevailing sentiment every minute of the day, and in the most trifling concerns of life.

On my return to Geneva, the prefect signified to me not only that he forbid me from going under any pretence to the countries united to France, but that he advised me not to travel in Switzerland, and never to go in any direction beyond two leagues from Coppet. I objected to him that being domiciliated in Switzerland, I did not clearly understand by what right a French authority could forbid me from travelling in a foreign country. The prefect no doubt thought me rather a simpleton to discuss at that moment a point of right, repeated his advice to me in a tone singularly approaching to an order. I confined myself my protest: but the very next day I learned that one of the most distinguished literati of Germany, M. Schlegel, who had for eight years been employed in the education of my sons, had received an order not only to leave Geneva, but to quit Coppet. I wished still to represent that in Switzerland the prefect of Geneva had no orders to give; but I was told, that if I liked better to receive this order through the French ambassador, I might be gratified: that the ambassador would address the landamann, and the landamann would apply to the canton of Vaud, who would immediately send M. Schlegel from my house. By making despotism go this roundabout, I might have gained ten days, but nothing more. I then wished to know why I was deprived of the society of M. Schlegel, my own friend, and that of my children. The prefect, who was accustomed, like the greater part of the emperor's agents, to couple very smooth words with very harsh acts, told me that it was from regard to me that the government banished M. Schlegel from my house as he made me an Anti-gallican. Much affected by this proof of the paternal care of the government, I asked what Mr. S. had ever done against France: the prefect objected to his literary opinions, and referred among other things to a pamphlet of his, in which, in a comparison between the Phedra of Euripides and that of Racine, he had given the preference to the former. How very delicate for a Corsican monarch to take in this manner act and cause (sic) for the slightest shades of French literature! But the real truth was, M. Schlegel was banished because he was my friend, because his conversation animated my solitude, and because the system was now begun to be acted upon, which soon became evident, of making a prison of my soul, in tearing from me every enjoyment of intellect and friendship.

I resumed the resolution of leaving Switzerland, which the pain of quitting my friends and the ashes of my parents had made me so often give up; but there remained a very difficult problem to solve, and that was to find the means of departure. The French government threw so many difficulties in the way of a passport for America, that I durst no longer think of that plan. Besides, I had reason to be afraid lest at the moment of my embarkation they should pretend to have discovered that I was going to England, and that the decree might be applied to me, which condemned to imprisonment all who attempted to go there without the authority of the government. It seemed to me, therefore, much preferable to go to Sweden, that honorable country, whose new chief already gave indications of the glorious conduct which he has since known how to sustain. But by what road to get to Sweden? The prefect had given me to understand in all ways, that wherever France commanded, I should be arrested, and how was I to reach the point where she did not command? I must necessarily pass through Russia, as the whole of Germany was under the French dominion. But to get to Russia, I must cross Bavaria and Austria. I could trust my self in the Tyrol, although it was united to a state of the confederation, on account of the courage which its unfortunate inhabitants had shewn. As to Austria, in spite of the fatal debasement into which she had sunk, I had sufficient confidence in her monarch to believe that he would not deliver me up; but I knew also that he could not defend me. After having sacrificed the ancient honor of his house, what strength remained to him of any kind? I spent my days, therefore, in studying the map of Europe to escape from it, as Napoleon studied it to make himself its master, and my campaign, as well as his, always had Russia for its field. This power was the last asylum of the oppressed; it was therefore that which the conqueror of Europe wished to overthrow.



CHAPTER 3.

Journey in Switzerland with M. de Montmorency.

Determined to go by the way of Russia, I required a passport to enter it. But a fresh difficulty occurred; I must write to Petersburgh to obtain this passport: such was the formality which circumstances rendered necessary; and although I was certain of meeting with no refusal from the known generous character of the emperor Alexander, I had reason to be afraid that in the ministerial offices it might be mentioned that I had asked for a passport, and in that way get to the French ambassador's ears, which would lead to my arrest, and prevent me from executing my project. It was necessary, therefore, to go first to Vienna, to ask for my passport from thence, and there wait for it. The six weeks which would be required to send my letter and receive an answer, would be passed under the protection of a ministry which had given the archduchess of Austria to Bonaparte;-could I trust myself to it? It was clear, however, that by remaining as a hostage, under the hand of Napoleon, I not only renounced the exercise of my own talents, but I prevented my sons from following any public career; they could enter into no service, either for Bonaparte or against him; it was impossible to find an establishment for my daughter, as it was necessary either to separate myself from her, or to confine her to Coppet; and yet if I was arrested in my flight, there was an end of the fortune of my children, who would not have wished to separate themselves from my destiny.

It was in the midst of all these perplexities, that a friend of twenty years standing, M. Mathieu de Montmorency proposed to come and see me, as he had already done several times since my exile. It is true that I was written to from Paris, that the Emperor had expressed his displeasure against everyone who should go to Coppet, and especially against M. de Montmorency, if he again went there. But I confess I made light of these expressions of the Emperor, which he throws out sometimes to terrify people, and struggled very feebly with M. de Montmorency, who generously sought to tranquillize me by his letters. I was wrong, no doubt; but who could have persuaded themselves that an old friend of a banished woman would have it charged to him as a crime, his going to spend a few days with her. The life of M. de Montmorency, entirely consecrated to works of piety, or to family affections, estranged him so completely from all politics, that unless it would even go the length of banishing the saints, it seemed to me impossible that the government would attack such a man. I asked myself likewise, cui bono; a question I have always put to myself whenever any action of Napoleon was in discussion. I know that he will, without hesitation, do all the evil which can be of use to him for the least thing; but I do not always conjecture the lengths to which his prodigious egotism extends in all directions, towards the infinitely little, as well as the infinitely great.

Although the prefect had made me be told that he recommended me not to travel in Switzerland, I paid no attention to an advice which could not be made a formal order. I went to meet M. de Montmorency at Orbd, and from thence I proposed to him, as the object of a promenade in Switzerland, to return by way of Fribourg, to see the establishment of female Trappists, at a short distance front that of the men in Val-Sainte.

We reached the convent in the midst of a severe shower, after having been obliged to come nearly a mile on foot. As we were flattering ourselves with being admitted, the Procureur of la Trappe, who has the direction of the female convent, told us that nobody could be received there. I tried, however, to ring the bell at the gate of the cloister; a nun appeared behind the latticed opening through which the portress may speak to strangers.

"What do you want?" said she to me, in a voice without modulation as we might suppose that of a ghost. "I should wish to see the interior of your convent."—"That is impossible."—"But I am very wet, and want to dry myself."—She immediately touched a spring which opened the door of an outer apartment, in which I was allowed to rest myself; but no living creature appeared. I had hardly been seated a few minutes, when becoming impatient at being unable to penetrate into the interior of the house, I rung again; the same person again appeared, and I asked her if no females were ever admitted into the convent; she answered that it was only in cases when any one had the intention of becoming a nun. "But," said I to her, "how can I know if I wish to remain in your house, if I am not permitted to examine it."—"Oh, that is quite useless," replied she, "I am very sure that you have no vocation for our state," and with these words immediately shut her wicket. I know not by what signs this nun had satisfied herself of my worldly dispositions; it is possible that a quick manner of speaking, so different from theirs, is sufficient to make them distinguish travellers, who are merely curious. The hour of vespers approaching, I could go into the church to hear the nuns sing; they were behind a black plose grating, through which nothing could be seen. You only heard the noise of their wooden shoes, and of the wooden benches as they raised them to sit down. Their singing had nothing of sensibility in it, and I thought I could remark both by their manner of praying, and in the conversation which I had afterwards with the father Trappist, who directed them, that it was not religious enthusiasm, such as we conceive it, but severe and grave habits which could support such a kind of life. The tenderness of piety would even exhaust the strength; a sort of ruggedness of soul is necessary to so rude an existence.

The new Father Abbe of the Trappists, settled in the vallies of the Canton of Fribourg, has added to the austerities of the order. One can have no idea of the minute degrees of suffering imposed upon the monks; they go so far as even to forbid them, when they have been standing for some hours in succession, from leaning against the wall, or wiping the perspiration from their forehead; in short every moment of their life is filled with suffering, as the people of the world fills theirs with enjoyment. They rarely live to be old, and those to whom this lot falls, regard it as a punishment from heaven. Such an establishment would be barbarous if any one was compelled to enter it, or if there was the least concealment of what they suffer there. But on the contrary, they distribute to whoever wishes to read it, a printed statement, in which the rigors of the order are rather exaggerated than softened; and yet there are novices who are willing to take the vows, and those who are received never run away, although they might do it without the least difficulty. The whole rests, as it appears to me, upon the powerful idea of death; the institutions and amusements of society are destined in the world to turn our thoughts entirely upon life; but when the contemplation of death gets a certain hold of the human heart, joined to a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, there are no bounds to the disgust which it may take to every thing which forms a subject of interest in the world; and a state of suffering appearing the road to a future life, such minds follow it with avidity, like the traveller, who willingly fatigues himself, in order to get sooner over the road which leads him to the object of his wishes. But what equally astonished and grieved me, was to see children brought up with this severity: their poor locks shaved off, their young countenances already furrowed, that deathly dress with which they were covered before they knew any thing of life, before they had voluntarily renounced it, all this made my soul revolt against the parents who had placed them there. When such a state is not the adoption of a free and determined choice on the part of the person who professes it, it inspires as much horror as it at first created respect. The monk with whom I conversed, spoke of nothing but death; all his ideas came from that subject, or connected themselves with it; death is the sovereign monarch of this residence. As we talked of the temptations of the world, I expressed to the father Trappist my admiration of his conduct in thus sacrificing all, to withdraw himself from their influence. "We are cowards" said he to me, "who have retired into a fortress, because we feel we want the courage to meet our enemy in the open field." This reply was equally modest and ingenious*.

A few days after we had visited these places, the French government ordered the seizure of the father Abbe, M. de L'Estrange; the confiscation of the property of the order, and the dismissal of the fathers from Switzerland.

* (Note of the Editor.)I accompanied my mother in the excursion here related. Struck with the wild beauty of the place, and interested by the spiritual conversation of the Trappist who had attended us, I besought him to grant me hospitality until the following day, as I proposed going over the mountain on foot, in order to see the great convent of the Val-Sainte, and rejoining my mother and M. de Montmorency at Fribourg. This monk, with whom I continued to converse, had not much difficulty in discovering that I hated the imperial government, and I could guess that he fully participated in that sentiment. Afterwards, after thanking him for his kindness, I entirely lost sight of him, nor did I imagine, that he had preserved the least recollection of me.

Five years afterwards, in the first months of the Restoration, I was not a little surprised at receiving a letter from this same Trappist.

He had no doubt, he said, that now the legitimate monarch was restored to his throne, I must have a number of friends at court, and he requested me to employ their influence in procuring to his order the restoration of the property which it possessed in France. This letter was signed "Father A .... priest and procureur of La Trappe," and he added, as a postscript, "If a twenty-three years' emigration' and four campaigns in a regiment of horse-chasseurs in the army of Conde, give me any claims to the royal favor, I beg you will make use of them."

I could not help laughing, both at the idea which this good monk had of my influence at court, and at the use of it which he required from a protestant. I sent his letter to M. de Montmorency, whose influence was much greater than mine, and I have reason to believe that the petition was granted.

In other respects, these Trappists were not, in the deep vales of the Canton of Fribourg, such strangers to politics as their residence and their habit would lead one to believe.

I have since learned that they served as a medium for the correspondence of the French clergy with the pope, then a prisoner at Savonne. Certainly, although this does not at all excuse the rigor with which they were treated by Bonaparte, it gives a sufficient explanation of it. (End of editor's note.)

I know not of what M. de L'Estrange was accused; but it is scarcely probable that such a man should have meddled with the affairs of the world, much less the monks, who never quitted their solitude. The Swiss government caused search to be made every where for M. de L'Estrange, and I hope for its honor, that it took care not to find him. However, the unfortunate magistrates of countries which are called allies of France, are very often employed to arrest persons designated to them, ignorant whether they are delivering innocent or guilty victims to the great Leviathan, which thinks proper to swallow them up. The property of the Trappists was seized, that is to say, their tomb, for they hardly possessed any thing else, and the order was dispersed. It is said, that a Trappist at Genoa had mounted the pulpit to retract the oath of allegiance which he had taken to the emperor, declaring that since the captivity of the pope, he considered every priest as released from this oath. At his coming out from performing this act of repentance, he was, report also says, tried by a military commission, and shot. One would think that he was sufficiently punished, without rendering the whole order responsible for his conduct.

We regained Vevay by the mountains, and I proposed to M. de Montmorency to proceed as far as the entrance of the Valais, which I had never seen. We stopped at Bex, the last Swiss village, for the Valais was already united to France. A Portuguese brigade had left Geneva to go and occupy the Valais: singular state of Europe, to have a Portuguese garrison at Geneva going to take possession of a part of Switzerland in the name of France! I had a curiosity to see the Cretins of the Valais, of whom I had so often heard. This miserable degradation of man affords ample subject for reflection; but it is excessively painful to see the human countenance thus become an object of horror and repugnance. I remarked, however, in several of these poor creatures, a degree of vivacity bordering on astonishment, produced on them by external objects. As they never recognize what they have already seen, they feel each time fresh surprize, and the spectacle of the world, with all its details, is thus for ever new to them; it is, perhaps, the compensation for their sad state, for certainly there is one. It is some years since a Cretin, having committed assassination, was condemned to death: as he was led to the scaffold, he took it into his head, seeing himself surrounded with a crowd of people, that he was accompanied in this manner to do him honor, and he laughed, held himself erect, and put his dress in order, with the idea of rendering himself more worthy of the fete. Was it right to punish such a being for the crime which his arm had committed?

There is at three leagues from Bex, a famous cascade, where the water falls from a very lofty mountain. I proposed to my friends to go and see it, and we returned before dinner. It is true that this cascade was upon the territory of the Valais, consequently then upon the French territory, and I forgot that I was not allowed more of that than the small space of ground which separates Coppet from Geneva. When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire. I might have said, in the words of Lafontaine's fable:

*Je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue

(I grazed of this meadow the breadth of my tongue.) But I confessed with great simplicity the fault I had committed in going to see this Swiss cascade, without dreaming that it was in France.



CHAPTER 4.

Exile of M. de Montmorency and Madame Recamier—New persecutions.

This continual chicanery upon my most trifling actions, rendered my life odious to me, and I could not divert myself by occupation; for the recollection of the fate of my last work, and the certainty of never being able to publish any thing in future, operated as a complete damper to my mind, which requires emulation to be capable of labor. Notwithstanding, I could not yet resolve to quit for ever the borders of France, the abode of my father, and the friends who remained faithful to me. Every day I thought of departing, and every day I found in my own mind some reason for remaining, until the last blow was aimed at my soul; God knows what I have suffered from it.

M. de Montmorency came to pass several days with me at Coppet, and the wickedness of detail in the master of so great an empire is so well calculated, that by the return of the courier who announced his arrival at Coppet, my friend received his letter of exile. The emperor would not have been satisfied if this order had not been signified to him at my house, and if there had not been in the letter itself of the minister of police, a word to signify that I was the cause of this exile. M. de Montmorency endeavoured, in every possible way, to soften the news to me, but, I tell it to Bonaparte, that he may applaud himself on the success of his scheme, I shrieked with agony on learning the calamity which I had drawn on the head of my generous friend; and never was my heart, tried as it had been for so many years, nearer to despair. I knew not how to lull the rending thoughts which succeeded each other in my bosom, and had recourse to opium to suspend for some hours the anguish which I felt. M. do Montmorency, calm and religious, invited me to follow his example; the consciousness of the devotedness to me which he had condescended to show, supported him: but for me, I reproached myself for the bitter consequences of this devotedness, which now separated him from his family and friends. I prayed to the Almighty without ceasing, but grief would not quit its hold of me for a moment, and life became a burden to me.

While I was in this state, I received a letter from Madame Recamier, that beautiful person who has received the admiration of the whole of Europe, and who has never abandoned an unfortunate friend. She informed me, that on her road to the waters of Aix in Savoy, to which she was proceeding, she intended stopping at my house, and would be there in two days. I trembled lest the lot of M. de Montmorency should also become hers. However improbable it was, I was ordained to fear every thing from hatred so barbarous and minute, and I therefore sent a courier to meet Madame Recamier, to beseech her not to come to Coppet. To know that she who had never failed to console me with the most amiable attention was only a few leagues distant from me; to know that she was there, so near to my habitation, and that I was not allowed to see her again, perhaps for the last time! all this I was obliged to bear. I conjured her not to stop at Coppet; she would not yield to my entreaties; she could not pass under my windows without remaining some hours with me, and it was with convulsions of tears that I saw her enter this chateau, in which her arrival had always been a fete. She left me the next day, and repaired instantly to one of her relations at fifty leagues distance from Switzerland. It was in vain; the fatal blow of exile smote her also; she had had the intention of seeing me, and that was enough; for the generous compassion which had inspired her, she must be punished. The reverses of fortune which she had met with made the destruction of her natural establishment extremely painful to her. Separated from all her friends, she has passed whole months in a little provincial town, a prey to the extremes of every feeling of insipid and melancholy solitude. %Such was the lot to which I was the cause of condemning the most brilliant female of her time; and thus regardless did the chief of the French, that people so renowned for their gallantry, show himself towards the most beautiful woman in Paris. In one day he smote virtue and distinguished birth in M. de Montmorency; beauty in Madame Recamier, and if I dare say it, the reputation of high talents in myself. Perhaps he also flattered himself with attacking the memory of my father in his daughter, in order that it might be truly said that in this world, under his reign, the dead and the living, piety, beauty, wit, and celebrity, all were as nothing. Persons made themselves culpable by being found wanting in the delicate shades of flattery towards him, in refusing to abandon any one who had been visited by his disgrace. He recognises but two classes of human creatures, those who serve him, and those, who without injuring, wish to have an existence independent of him. He is unwilling that in the whole universe, from the details of housekeeping to the direction of empires, a single will should act without reference to his.

"Madam de Stael," said the prefect of Geneva, "has contrived to make herself a very pleasant life at Coppet; her friends and foreigners come to see her: the emperor will not allow that." And why did he torment me in this manner? that I might print an eulogium upon him: and of what consequence was this eulogium to him, among the millions of phrases which fear and hope were constantly offering at his shrine? Bonaparte once said: "If I had the choice, either of doing a noble action myself, or of inducing my adversary to do a mean one, I would not hesitate to prefer the debasement of my enemy." In this sentence you have the explanation of the particular pains which he took to torment my existence. He knew that I was attached to my friends, to France, to my works, to my tastes, to society; in taking from me every thing which composed my happiness, his wish was to trouble me sufficiently to make me write some piece of insipid flattery, in the hope that it would obtain me my recall. In refusing to lend myself to his wishes, I ought to say it, I have not had the merit of making a sacrifice; the emperor wished me to commit a meanness, but a meanness entirely useless; for at a time when success was in a manner deified, the ridicule would not have been complete, if I had succeeded in returning to Paris, by whatever means I had effected it. To satisfy our master, whose skill in degrading whatever remains of lofty mind is unquestionable, it was necessary that I should dishonor myself in order to obtain my return to France,—that he should turn into mockery my zeal in praise of him, who had never ceased to persecute me,—and that this zeal should not be of the least service to me. I have denied him this truly refined satisfaction; it is all the merit I have had in the long contest which has subsisted between his omnipotence and my weakness.

M. de Montmorency's family, in despair at his exile, were anxious, as was natural, that he should separate himself from the sad cause of this calamity, and I saw that friend depart without knowing if he would ever again honor with his presence my residence on this earth. On the 31st of August, 1811, I broke the first and last of the ties which bound me to my native country; I broke them, at least so far as regards human connections, which can no longer exist between us; but I never lift my eyes towards heaven without thinking of my excellent friend, and I venture to believe also, that in his prayers he answers me. Beyond this, fate has denied me all other correspondence with him.

When the exile of my two friends became known, I was assailed by a whole host of chagrins of every kind; but a great misfortune renders us in a manner insensible to fresh troubles. It was reported that the minister of police had declared that he would have a soldier's guard mounted at the bottom of the avenue of Coppet, to arrest whoever came to see me. The prefect of Geneva, who was instructed, by order of the emperor he said, to annul me (that was his expression), never missed an opportunity of insinuating, or even declaring publicly, that no one who had any thing either to hope or fear from the government ought to venture near me. M. de Saint-Priest, formerly minister of Louis XVI. and the colleague of my father, honored me with his affection; his daughters who dreaded, and with reason, that he might be sent from Geneva, united their entreaties with mine that he would abstain from visiting me. Notwithstanding, in the middle of winter, at the age of seventy-eight, he was banished not only from Geneva, but from Switzerland; for it is fully admitted, as has been seen in my own case, that the emperor can banish from Switzerland as well as from France; and when any objections are made to the French agents, on the score of being in a foreign country, whose independence is recognised, they shrug up their shoulders, as if you were wearying them with Metaphysical quibbles. And really it is a perfect quibble to wish to distinguish in Europe anything but prefect-kings, and prefects receiving their orders directly from the emperor of France. If there is any difference between the soi-disant allied countries and the French provinces, it is that the first are rather worse treated. There remains in France a certain recollection of having been called the great nation, which sometimes obliges the emperor to be measured in his proceedings; it was so at least, but every day even that becomes less necessary. The motive assigned for the banishment of M. de Saint-Priest was, that he had not induced his sons to abandon the service of Russia. His sons had, during the emigration, met with the most generous reception in Russia; they had there been promoted, their intrepid courage had there been properly rewarded; they were covered with wounds, they were distinguished among the first for their military talents; the eldest was now more than thirty years of age. How was it possible for a father to ask that the existence of his sons, thus established, should be sacrificed to the honor of coming to place themselves en surveillance on the French territory? for that was the enviable lot which was reserved for them. It was a source of melancholy satisfaction to me, that I had not seen M. de Saint-Priest for four months previous to his banishment; had it not been for that, no one would have doubted that it was I who had infected him with the contagion of my disgrace.

Not only Frenchmen, but foreigners, were apprised that they must not go to my house. The prefect kept upon the watch to prevent even old friends from seeing me. One day, among others, he deprived me, by his official vigilance, of the society of a German gentleman, whose conversation was extremely agreeable to me, and I could not help telling him, on this occasion, that he might have spared himself this extraordinary degree of persecution. "How!" replied he, "it was to do you a service that I acted in this manner; I made your friend sensible that he would compromise you by going to see you." I could not refrain from a smile at this ingenious argument. "Yes," continued he with the most perfect gravity, "the emperor, seeing you preferred to himself, would be displeased with you for it." "So that" I replied, "the emperor expects that my private friends, and shortly, perhaps, my own children, should forsake me to please him; that seems to me rather too much. Besides, I do not well see how a person in my situation can be compromised; and what you say reminds me of a revolutionist who was applied to, in the times of terror, to use his endeavours to save one of his friends from the scaffold. I am afraid, said he, that my speaking in his favor would only injure him." The prefect smiled at my quotation, but continued that train of reasoning, which, backed as it is with four hundred thousand bayonets, always appears the soundest. A man at Geneva said to me, "Do not you think that the prefect declares his opinion with a great deal of frankness?" "Yes," I replied, "he says with sincerity that he is devoted to the man of power; he says with courage that he is of the strongest side; I am not exactly sensible of the merit of such an avowal."

Several independent ladies at Geneva continued to show me marks of the greatest kindness, of which I shall always retain a deep recollection. But even to the clerks in the custom houses, regarded themselves as in a state of diplomacy with me; and from prefects to sub-prefects, and from the cousins of one and the other, a profound terror would have seized them all, if I had not spared them, as much as was in my power, the anxiety of paying or not paying a visit. Every courier brought reports of other friends of mine being exiled from Paris, for having kept up connections with me; it became a matter of strict duty for me to avoid seeing a single Frenchman of the least note; and very often I was even apprehensive of injuring persons in the country where I was living, whose courageous friendship never failed itself towards me. I felt two opposite sensations, and both, I believe, equally natural; melancholy at being forsaken, and cruel anxiety for those who showed attachment to me. It is difficult to conceive a situation in life more painful at every moment; for the space of nearly two years that I endured it, I may say truly that I never once saw the day return without a feeling of desolation at having to support the existence which that day renewed. But why should not you leave it then? will be said, and was said incessantly to me from all quarters. A man whom I ought not to name*, but who I trust knows how much I esteem the elevation of his character and conduct, said to me: "If you remain, he will treat you as Elizabeth did Mary Stuart:—nineteen years of misery, and the catastrophe at last." Another person, witty but unguarded in his expressions, wrote to me, that it was dishonorable to remain after so much ill-treatment. I had no need of these recommendations to wish, passionately wish, to depart; from the moment that I could no longer see my friends, that I was only a burden to my children's existence, was it not time to determine? The prefect, however, repeated in every possible way, that if I went off, I should be seized; that at Vienna, as well as at Berlin, I should be reclaimed; and that I could not make the least preparation for departure without his being informed of it; for he knew, he said, every thing that passed in my house. In that respect he was a boaster, and, as the event has proved, exhibited mere fatuity in matters of espionnage. But who would not have been terrified at the tone of assurance with which he told all my friends that I could not move a step without being seized by the gendarmes!

* Count Elzearn de Sabran.



CHAPTER 5.

Departure from Coppet.

I passed eight months in a state I cannot describe, every day making a trial of my courage, and every day shrinking at the idea of a prison. All the world certainly fears it; but my imagination has such a dread of solitude, my friends are so necessary to me, to support and animate me, and to turn my attention to a new perspective when I sink under the intensity of painful sensations, that never has death presented itself to me under such terrible features as a prisoner a dungeon, where I might remain for years without ever hearing a friendly voice. I have been told that one of the Spaniards who defended Saragossa with the most astonishing intrepidity, utters the most dreadful shrieks in the tower at Vincennes, where he is kept confined; so much does this frightful solitude affect even the most energetic minds! Besides, I could not disguise from myself that I was not courageous; I have a bold imagination, but a timid character, and all kinds of perils appear to me like phantoms. The species of talent which I possess brings images to me with such living freshness, that if the beauties of nature are improved by it, dangers are made more dreadful. Sometimes I was afraid of a prison, sometimes of robbers, if I was obliged to go through Turkey, in the event of Russia being shut against me by political combinations: sometimes also the immense sea which I must cross between Constantinople and London, filled me with terror for my daughter and myself. Nevertheless I had always the wish to depart; an inward feeling of boldness excited me to it; but I might say, like a well known Frenchman, "I tremble at the dangers to which my courage is about to expose me." In truth, what adds to the horrible barbarity of persecuting females, is, that their nature is both irritable and weak; they suffer more acutely from trouble, and are less capable of the strength required to escape from it.

I was also affected by another kind of terror: I was afraid that the moment the emperor knew of my departure, he would insert in the newspapers one of those articles which he knows so well how to dictate, when he wishes to commit moral assassination. A senator told me one day, that Napoleon was the best journalist he ever knew; and certainly if this expression meant to designate the art of defaming individuals and nations, he possesses it in the highest degree. Nations are not affected by it; but he has acquired in the revolutionary times he has passed through, a certain tact in calumnies suitable to vulgar comprehension, which makes him find the expressions best adapted for circulation among those whose wit is confined to repeating the phrases published by the government for their use. If the Moniteur accused any one of robbing on the highway, no French, German, or Italian journal could admit his justification, It is almost impossible to represent to one's self what a man is, at the head of a million of soldiers, and possessed of ten millions of revenue, having all the prisons of Europe at his disposal, with the kings for his gaolers, and using the press as his mouth-piece, at a time when people have hardly the intimacy of friendship to make a reply; finally, with the ability of turning misfortune into ridicule: execrable power, whose ironical enjoyment is the last insult which the infernal genii can make the human race endure!

Whatever independence of character one had, I believe that no one could refrain from shuddering at the idea of having such power directed against one's self; at least I confess having felt this movement very strongly; and in spite of the melancholy of my situation, I frequently said to myself, that a roof for shelter, a table for sustenance, and a garden for exercise, formed a lot with which one must learn to be contented; but even this lot, such as it was, no one could be certain of retaining in peace; a word might escape, a word might be repeated, and this man, whose power was continually on the increase, to what a point might he not at last be irritated? When the sun shone brightly, my courage returned; but when the sky was covered with clouds, travelling terrified me, and I discovered in myself a taste for indolent pursuits, foreign to my nature, but which fear had given birth to; physical happiness appeared to me then greater than I had previously regarded it, and every sort of exertion alarmed me. My health also, cruelly affected by so many troubles, weakened the energy of my character, so that during this period I put the patience of my friends to a most severe test, by an eternal discussion of the plans in deliberation, and overwhelming them with my uncertainties.

I tried a second time to obtain a passport for America; they made me wait till the middle of winter before they gave me the answer I required, which terminated in a refusal. I then offered to enter into an engagement never to print any thing upon any subject, not even a bouquet to Iris, provided I was allowed to live at Rome; I had the vanity to remind them that it was the author of Corinna who asked permission to go and live in Italy. Doubtless the minister of police had never found a similar motive inscribed upon his registers, and the air of the south, which was so necessary to my health, was mercilessly refused me.

They never ceased declaring to me that my whole life should be spent in the circle of two leagues, which separates Coppet from Geneva. If I remained, I must separate myself from my sons, who were of an age to seek a profession; and if my daughter shared my fortune, I imposed upon her the most melancholy perspective. The city of Geneva, which has preserved such noble traces of liberty, was, notwithstanding, gradually allowing herself to be gained over by the interests which connected her with the distributors of places in France. Every day the number of persons with whom I could be in intelligence diminished; and all my feelings became a weight upon my soul, in place of being a source of life. There was an end of my talents, of my happiness, of my existence, for it is frightful to be of no service to one's children, and to be the cause of injuring one's friends. Finally, the news I received, announced to me from all quarters the formidable preparations of the emperor: it was evident that he wished first to make himself master of the ports of the Baltic by the destruction of Russia, and that afterwards he reckoned on making use of the wrecks of that power to lead them against Constantinople: and his subsequent intention was to make that the point of starting for the conquest of Asia and Africa. A short time before he left Paris, he had said, "I am tired of this old Europe." And in truth she is no longer sufficient for the activity of her master. The last outlets of the Continent might be closed from one moment to another, and I was about to find myself in Europe as in a garrisoned town, where all the gates are guarded by military.

I determined therefore on going off, while there yet remained one means of getting to England, and that means the tour of the whole of Europe. I fixed the 15th of May for my departure, the preparations for which had been arranged long before-hand in the most profound secrecy. On the eve of that day, my strength abandoned me entirely, and for a moment I almost persuaded myself that such a degree of terror as I felt could only proceed from the consciousness of meditating a bad action. Sometimes I consulted all sort of presages in the most foolish manner; at others, which was much wiser, I interrogated my friends and myself on the morality of my resolution. It appears to me that the part of resignation in all things may be the most religious, and I am not surprised that pious men should have gone so far as to feel a sort of scruple about resolutions proceeding from free will. Necessity appears to bear a sort of divine character, while man's resolution may be connected with his pride. It is certain, however, that none of our faculties have been given us in vain, and that of deciding for one's self has also its use, On another side, all persons of mediocre intellect are continually astonished that talent has different desires from theirs. When it is successful, all the world might do the same; but when it is productive of trouble, when it excites to stepping out of the common track, these same people regard it no longer but as a disease, and almost as a crime. I heard continually buzzing about me the commonplaces with which the world suffers itself to be led: "Has not she plenty of money? Can she not live well and sleep well in a good house?" Some persons of a higher cast felt that I had not even the certainty of my sad situation, and that it might get worse, without ever getting better. But the atmosphere which surrounded me counselled repose, because, for the last six months I had not been assailed by any new persecution, and because men always believe that what is, is what will be. It was in the midst of all these dispiriting circumstances that I was called upon to take one of the strongest resolutions which can occur in the private life of a female. My servants, with the exception of two confidential persons, were entirely ignorant of my secret; the greatest part of those who visited me had not the least idea of it, and by a single action, I was going to make an entire change in my own life and that of my family. Torn to pieces by uncertainty, I wandered over the park of Coppet; I seated myself in all the places where my father had been accustomed to repose himself and contemplate nature; I regarded once more these same beauties of water and verdure which we had so often admired together. I bid them adieu, and recommended myself to their sweet influence. The monument which encloses the ashes of my father and my mother, and in which, if the good God permits, mine also will be deposited, was one of the principal causes of the regret I felt at banishing myself from the place of my residence; but I found almost always on approaching it, a sort of strength which appeared to me to come from on high. I passed an hour in prayer before that iron gate which inclosed the mortal remains of the noblest of human beings, and there, my soul was convinced of the necessity of departure. I recalled the famous verses of Claudian*, in which he expresses the kind of doubt which arises in the most religious minds when they see the earth abandoned to the wicked, and the destiny of mortals as it were floating at the mercy of chance. I felt that I had no longer the strength necessary to feed the enthusiasm which developed in me whatever good qualities I possessed, and that I must listen to the voice of those of similar sentiments with myself, for the purpose of strengthening my confidence in my own resources, and preserving that self-respect which my father had instilled into me. In this state of anxiety, I invoked several times the memory of my father, of that man, the Fenelon of politics, whose genius was in every thing opposed to that of Bonaparte; and genius he certainly had, for it requires at least as much of that to put one's self in harmony with heaven, as to invoke to one's aid all the instruments which are let loose by the absence of laws divine and human. I went once more to look at my father's study, where his easy chair, his table, and his papers, still remained in their old situation; I embraced each venerated mark, I took his cloak which till then I had ordered to be left upon his chair, and carried it away with me, that I might wrap myself in it, if the messenger of death approached me. When these adieus were terminated, I avoided as much as I could any other leave-takings, which affected me too much, and wrote to the friends whom I quitted, taking care that my letters should not reach them until several days after my departure.

* Saepe mihi dubiam traxitisententia mentem, Curarent Superi terras, an nullus inesset Rector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu.

Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum, Absolvitque Deos. Jam non ad culmina rerum Injustos crevisse queror; tolluntur in altum Ut lapsu graviore raent.

The next day, Saturday the 23rd of May, 1812, at two o'clock in the afternoon, I got into my carriage, saying that I should return to dinner. I took no packet whatever with me; I had my fan in my hand, and my daughter hers; only my son and Mr. Rocca carried in their pockets what was necessary for some days journey. In descending the avenue of Coppet, in thus quitting that chateau which had become to me like an old and valued friend, I was ready to faint: my son took my hand, and said, "My dear mother, think that you are setting out for England*." That word revived my spirits: I was still, however, at nearly two thousand leagues distance from that goal, to which the usual road would have so speedily conducted me: but every step brought me at least something nearer to it. When I had proceeded a few leagues, I sent back one of my servants to apprize my establishment that I should not return until the next day, and I continued travelling night and day as far as a farmhouse beyond Berne, where I had fixed to meet Mr. Schlegel, who was so good as to offer to accompany me; there also I had to leave my eldest son, who had been educated, up to the age of fourteen, by the example of my father, whose features he reminds one of. A second time all my courage abandoned me; that Switzerland, still so tranquil and always so beautiful, her inhabitants, who know how to be free by their virtues, even though they have lost their political independence: the whole country detained me: it seemed to tell me not to quit it. It was still time to return: I had not yet made an irreparable step. Although the prefect had thought proper to interdict me from travelling in Switzerland, I saw clearly that it was only from the fear of my going beyond it. Finally, I had not yet crossed the barrier which left me no possibility of returning; the imagination feels a difficulty in supporting this idea. On the other hand, there was also something irreparable in the resolution of remaining; for after that moment, I felt, and the event has proved the feeling correct, that I could no longer escape. Besides, there is an indescribable sort of shame in recommencing such solemn farewells, and one can scarcely resuscitate for one's friends more than once. I know not what would have become of me, if this uncertainty, even at the very moment of action, had lasted much longer; for my head was quite confused with it. My children decided me, and especially my daughter, then scarcely fourteen years old. I committed myself, in a manner, to her, as if the voice of God had made itself be heard by the mouth of a child*.

* England was then the hope of all who suffered for the cause of liberty; how comes it, that after the victory, her ministers have so cruelly deceived the expectation of Europe? (Note by the Editor.)

My son took his leave, and after he was out of my sight, I could say, like Lord Russel: the bitterness of death is past. I got into my carriage with my daughter: uncertainty once terminated, I collected all my strength within myself, and I found sufficient of that for action which had altogether failed me for deliberation.

Note by the Editor: * It was but a trifle to have succeeded in quitting Coppet, by deceiving* the vigilance of the prefect of Geneva; it was also necessary to obtain passports for the purpose of going through Austria, and that these passports should be under a name which would attract no attention from the different polices which then divided Germany. My mother entrusted me with this commission, and the emotion which I experienced from it will never cease to be present to my thoughts. It was undoubtedly a decisive step; if the passports were refused, my mother sunk again into a much more cruel situation; her plans were known; flight was thenceforward become impracticable, and the rigors of her exile would have every day been more intolerable. I thought I could not do better than to address myself directly to the Austrian minister, with that confidence in the feelings of his equals which is the first movement of every honest man. M. de Schraut made no hesitation in granting me the so much desired passports, and I hope he will allow me to express in this place the gratitude which I still retain to him for them. At a period when Europe was still bending under the yoke of Napoleon, during which the persecution directed against my mother estranged from her persons who probably owed to her courageous friendship the preservation of their fortunes, or their lives, I was not surprised, but I was most sensibly affected by the generous proceeding of the Austrian minister.

I left my mother to return to Coppet, to which the interests of her fortune recalled me; and some days afterwards, my brother, of whom a cruel death has deprived us almost at the moment of entrance into his career set off to rejoin my mother at Vienna with her servants and travelling carriage. It was only this second departure which gave the hint to the police of the prefect of the Leman: so true it is, that to the other qualities of espionnage we must still add stupidity. Fortunately my mother was already far beyond the reach of the gendarmes, and she could continue the journey of which the narrative follows. (En of Note by the Editor).



CHAPTER 6.

Passage through Austria;—1812.

In this manner, after ten years of continually increasing persecutions, first sent away from Paris, then banished into Switzerland, afterwards confined to my own chateau, and at last condemned to the dreadful punishment of never seeing my friends, and of being the cause of their banishment: in this manner was I obliged to quit, as a fugitive, two countries, France and Switzerland, by order of a man less French than myself: for I was born on the borders of that Seine where his tyranny alone naturalizes him. The air of this fine country is not a native air to him: can he then comprehend the pain of being banished from it, he who considers this fertile country only as the instrument of his victories? Where is his country? it is the earth which is subject to him. His fellow citizens? they are the slaves who obey his orders. He complained one day of not having had under his command, like Tamerlane, nations to whom reasoning was unknown. I imagine that by this time he is satisfied with Europeans: their manners, like their armies, now bear a sufficient resemblance to those of Tartars.

I had nothing to fear in Switzerland, as I could always prove that I had a right to be there; but to leave it, I had only a foreign passport: I must go through one of the confederated states, and if any French agent had required the government of Bavaria to hinder me from passing, who does not know with what regret, but at the same time, with what obedience it would have executed the orders thus received? I entered into the Tyrol with a great respect for that country, which had fought from attachment to its ancient masters, but with a great contempt for such of the Austrian ministers as had advised the abandonment of men compromised by their attachment to their sovereign. It is said that a subaltern diplomatist, head of the spy department in Austria, thought proper one day, during the war, to maintain at the emperor's table, that the Tyrolese should be abandoned: M. de H., a gentleman of the Tyrol, counsellor of state in the Austrian service, who in his actions and writings has exhibited the courage of a warrior, and the talents of an historian, replied to these unworthy observations with the contempt they deserved: the emperor signified his entire approbation to M. de H., and showed by that at least that his private feelings were strangers to the political conduct which he was made to adopt. Thus it is that the greater part of the European sovereigns, at the moment of Bonaparte making himself master of France, who were extremely upright persons as individuals, were already become mere cyphers as kings, as the government of their states was entirely committed to circumstances and to their ministers.

The aspect of the Tyrol reminds one of Switzerland: there is not, however, so much vigour and originality in the landscape, nor have the villages the same appearance of plenty; it is in short a fine country, which has been wisely governed, but never been free; and it is only as a mountaineer people, that it has shown itself capable of resistance. Very few instances of remarkable men can be mentioned from the Tyrol: first, the Austrian government is scarcely fit to develope genius; and, besides, the Tyrol, by its manners as well as by its geographical position, should have formed a part of the Swiss confederation: its incorporation with the Austrian monarchy not being conformable to its nature, it has only developed by that union the noble qualities of mountaineers, courage and fidelity.

The postilion who drove us showed us a rock on which the emperor Maximilian, grandfather of Charles the Fifth, had nearly perished: the ardor of the chace had stimulated him to such a degree, that he had followed the chamois to heights from which it was impossible to descend. This tradition is still popular in the country, so necessary to nations is the admiration of the past. The memory of the last war was still quite alive in the bosoms of the people; the peasants showed us the summits of mountains on which they had entrenched themselves: their imagination delighted in retracing the effect of their fine warlike music, when it echoed from the tops of the hills into the vallies. When we were shown the palace of the prince-royal of Bavaria, at Inspruck, they told us that Hofer, the courageous peasant and head of the insurrection, had lived there; they gave us an instance of the intrepidity shown by a female, when the French entered into her chateau: in short, every thing displayed in them the desire of being a nation, much more than personal attachment to the house of Austria.

In one of the churches at Inspruck is the famous tomb of Maximilian. I went to see it, flattering myself with the certainty of not being recognized by any person, in a place remote from the capitals where the French agents reside. The figure of Maximilian in bronze, is kneeling upon a sarcophagus, in the body of the church, and thirty statues of the same metal ranged on each side of the sanctuary represent the relations and ancestors of the emperor. So much past grandeur, so much of the ambition formidable in its day, collected in a family meeting round a tomb, formed a spectacle which led one to profound reflection: there you saw Philip the Good, Charles the Rash, and Mary of Bergundy; and in the midst of these historical personages Dietrich of Berne, a fabulous hero: the closed visor concealed the countenances of the knights, but when this visor was lifted up a brazen countenance appeared under a helmet of brass, and the features of the knight were of bronze, like his armour. The visor of Dietrich of Berne is the only one which cannot be lifted up, the artist meaning in that manner to signify the mysterious veil which covers the history of this warrior,

From Inspruck I had to pass by Saltzburg, from thence to reach the Austrian frontiers.

It seemed as if all my anxieties would be at an end, when I was once entered on the territory of that monarchy which I had known so secure and so good. But the moment which I most dreaded was the passage from Bavaria to Austria, for it was there that a courier might have preceded me, to forbid my being allowed to pass. In spite of this apprehension, I had not been very expeditious, for my health, which had been seriously injured by all I had suffered, did not allow me to travel by night. I have often felt, during this journey, that the greatest terror cannot overcome a sort of physical depression, which makes one dread fatigue more than death. I flattered myself, however, with arriving without any obstacle, and already my fear was dissipated on approaching the object which I thought secured, when on our entrance into the inn at Saltzburg, a man came up to Mr. Schlegel who accompanied me, and told him in German, that a French courier had been to inquire after a carriage coming from Inspruck with a lady and a young girl, and that he had left word he would return to get intelligence of them. I lost not a word of what the innkeeper mentioned, and became pale with terror. Mr. Schlegel also was alarmed on my account: he made some farther inquiries, all of which made it certain, that this was a French courier, that he came from Munich, that he had been as far as the Austrian frontier to wait for me, and not finding me there, that he had returned to meet me. Nothing appeared more clear: this was just what I had dreaded before my departure, and during the journey. It was impossible for me now to escape, as this courier, who it was said was already at the post-house, would necessarily overtake me. I determined on the spur of the moment to leave my carriage, my daughter, and Mr. Schlegel at the inn, and to go alone and on foot into the streets of the town, and take the chance' of entering the first house whose master or mistress had a physiognomy that pleased me. I would obtain of them an asylum for a few days; during this time, my daughter and Mr. Schlegel might say that they were going to rejoin me in Austria, and I should leave Salzburg afterwards in the disguise of a country woman. Hazardous in the extreme as this resource appeared, no other remained to me, and I was preparing for the task, in fear and trembling, when who should enter my apartment but this so much dreaded courier, who was no other than Mr. Rocca. After having accompanied me the first day of my journey, he returned to Geneva to terminate some business, and now came to rejoin me; he had passed himself off as a French courier, in order to take advantage of the terror which the name inspires, particularly to the allies of France, and to obtain horses more quickly. He had taken the Munich road, and had hurried on as far as the Austrian frontier, to make himself sure that no one had preceded or announced me. He returned to meet me, to tell me that I had nothing to fear, and to get upon the box of my carriage as we passed that frontier, which appeared to me the most dreadful, but also the last of my dangers. In this manner my cruel apprehension was changed into a most pleasing sentiment of gratefulness and security.

We walked about the town of Salzburg, which contains many noble edifices, but like the greater part of the ecclesiastical principalities of Germany, now presents a most dreary aspect. The tranquil resources of that kind of government have terminated with it. The convents also were preservers; one is struck with the number of establishments and edifices which have been erected by bachelor masters in their residence: all these peaceable sovereigns have benefited their people. An archbishop of Salzburg in the last century has cut a road which is prolonged for several hundred paces under a mountain, like the grotto of Pausilippo at Naples: on the front of the entrance gate there is a bust of the archbishop, under which is an inscription: Tesaxa loquuntur. (The stones speak of thee). There is a degree of grandeur in this inscription.

I entered at last into that Austria, which four years before I had seen so happy; already I was struck by a sensible change, produced by the depreciation of paper-money, and the variations of every kind which the uncertainty of the financial measures had introduced into its value. Nothing demoralizes a people so much as these continual fluctuations which make every man a broker, and hold out to the working classes a means of getting money by sharping, instead of by their labour. I no longer found in the people the same probity which had struck me four years before: this paper-money sets the imagination at work with the hope of rapid and easy gains; and the hazardous chances overturn the gradual and certain existence which is the basis of the honesty of the middling classes. During my residence in Austria, a man was hanged for forging notes at the very moment when the government had reduced the value of the old ones; he called out, on his way to execution that it was not he who had robbed, but the state. And, in truth, it is impossible to make the common people comprehend that it is just to punish them for having speculated in their own affairs, in the same way as the government had done in its own. But this government was the ally of the French government, and doubly its ally, as its monarch was the very patient father-in-law of a very terrible son-inlaw. What resources therefore could remain to him? The marriage of his daughter had been the means of liberating him from two millions of contributions-at most; the rest had been required with the kind of justice of which the other is so easily capable, and which consists in treating his friends and his enemies alike: from this proceeded the penury of the treasury. Another misfortune also resulted from the last war, and especially from the last peace: the inutility of the generous feeling which had illustrated the Austrian arms in the battles of Essling and Wagram, had cooled the national attachment to the sovereign, which had formerly been very strong. The same thing has happened to all the sovereigns who have treated with the emperor Napoleon; he has made use of them as receivers to levy imposts on his account; he has forced them to squeeze their subjects to pay him the taxes he demanded; and when it has suited him to dethrone these sovereigns, the people, previously alienated from them by the very wrongs they had committed in obedience to the emperor, have not raised an arm to defend them against him. The emperor Napoleon has the art of making countries said to be at peace, so singularly miserable that any change is agreeable to them, and having been once compelled to give men and money to France, they scarcely feel the inconvenience of being wholly united to it. They are wrong, however, for any thing is better than to lose the name of a nation, and as the miseries of Europe are caused by one man, care should be taken to preserve what may be restored when he is no more.