, 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 fro