enounced it. Nothing is more
common than to tranquillize ourselves against a threatened danger,
when we see no symptoms of it around us. I felt so little
disposition to enter into any hostile plan or action against this
man, that I thought it impossible for him not to leave me in peace;
and after some days longer, I returned to my own country seat,
satisfied that he had adjourned his resolution against me, and was
contented with having frightened me. In truth I had been
sufficiently so, not to make me change my opinion, or oblige me to
deny it, but to repress completely that remnant of republican habit
which had led me the year before, to speak with too much openness.

I was at table with three of my friends, in a room which commanded
a view of the high road, and the entrance gate; it was now the end
of September. At four o'clock, a man in a brown coat, on horseback,
stops at the gate and rings: I was then certain of my fate. He asked
for me, and I went to receive him in the garden. In walking towards
him, the perfume of the flowers, and the beauty of the sun
particularly struck me. How different are the sensations which
affect us from the combinations of society, from those of nature!
This man informed me, that he was the commandant of the gendarmerie
of Versailles; but that his orders were to go out of uniform, that
he might not alarm me; he shewed me a letter signed by Bonaparte,
which contained the order to banish me to forty leagues distance
from Paris, with an injunction to make me depart within four and
twenty hours; at the same time, to treat me with all the respect due
to a lady of distinction. He pretended to consider me as a
foreigner, and as such, subject to the police: this respect for
individual liberty did not last long, as very soon afterwards, other
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen were banished without any form of trial. I
told the gendarme officer, that to depart within twenty four hours,
might be convenient to conscripts, but not to a woman and children,
and in consequence, I proposed to him to accompany me to Paris,
where I had occasion to pass three days to make the necessary
arrangements for my journey. I got into my carriage with my children
and this officer, who had been selected for this occasion, as the
most literary of the gendarmes. In truth, he began complimenting me
upon my writings. "You see," said I to him, "the consequences of
being a woman of intellect, and I would recommend you, if there is