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 t