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