occasion, to dissuade any females of your family from attempting
it." I endeavoured to keep up my spirits by boldness, but I felt the
barb in my heart.

I stopt for a few minutes at Madame Recamier's; I found there
General Junot, who from regard to her, promised to go next morning
to speak to the first consul in my behalf; and he certainly did so
with the greatest warmth. One would have thought, that a man so
useful from his military ardor to the power of Bonaparte, would have
had influence enough with him, to make him spare a female; but the
generals of Bonaparte, even when obtaining numberless favours for
themselves, have no influence with him. When they ask for money or
places, Bonaparte finds that in character; they are in a manner then
in his power, as they place themselves in his dependance; but if,
what rarely happens to them, they should think of defending an
unfortunate person, or opposing an act of injustice, he would make
them feel very quickly, that they are only arms employed to support
slavery, by submitting to it themselves.

I got to Paris to a house I had recently hired, but not yet
inhabited; I had selected it with care in the quarter and exposition
which pleased me; and had already in imagination set myself down in
the drawing room with some friends, whose conversation is in my
opinion, the greatest pleasure the human mind can enjoy. Now, I only
entered this house, with the certainty of quitting it, and I passed
whole nights in traversing the apartments, in which I regretted the
deprivation of still more happiness than I could have hoped for in
it. My gendarme returned every morning, like the man in Blue-beard,
to press me to set out on the following day, and every day I was
weak enough to ask for one more day. My friends came to dine with
me, and sometimes we were gay, as if to drain the cup of sorrow, in
exhibiting ourselves in the most amiable light to each other, at the
moment of separating perhaps for ever. They told me that this man,
who came every day to summon me to depart, reminded them of those
times of terror, when the gendarmes came to summon their victims to
the scaffold.

Some persons may perhaps be surprized at my comparing exile to
death; but there have been great men, both in ancient and modern
times, who have sunk under this punishment. We meet with more
persons brave against the scaffold, than against the loss of
country. In all codes of law, perpetual banishment is regarded a