t of a person whom I scarcely knew, in the
midst of a society to which I was an entire stranger, and bearing in
my heart the most cutting chagrin, which I made every effort to
disguise. During the night, when alone with a female who had been
for several years devoted to my service, I sat listening at the
window, in expectation of hearing every moment the steps of a horse
gendarme; during the day I endeavoured to make myself agreeable, in
order to conceal my situation. I wrote a letter from this place to
Joseph Bonaparte, in which I described with perfect truth the extent
of my unhappiness. A retreat at ten leagues distance from Paris, was
the sole object of my ambition, and I felt despairingly, that if I
was once banished, it would be for a great length of time, perhaps
for ever. Joseph and his brother Lucien generously used all their
efforts to save me, and they were not the only ones, as will
presently be seen.

* Madame de Latour.
* Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely.

Madame Recamier, so celebrated for her beauty, and whose character
is even expressed in her beauty, proposed to me to come and live at
her country seat at St. Brice, at two leagues from Paris. I accepted
her offer, for I had no idea that I could thereby injure a person so
much a stranger to political affairs; I believed her protected
against every thing, notwithstanding the generosity of her
character. I found collected there a most delightful society, and
there I enjoyed for the last time, all that I was about to quit. It
was during this stormy period of my existence, that I received the
speech of Mr. Mackintosh; there I read those pages, where he gives
us the portrait of a jacobin, who had made himself an object of
terror during the revolution to children, women and old men, and who
is now bending himself double under the rod of the Corsican, who
ravishes from him, even to the last atom of that liberty, for which
he pretended to have taken arms. This morceau of the finest
eloquence touched me to my very soul; it is the privilege of
superior writers sometimes, unwittingly, to solace the unfortunate
in all countries, and at all times. France was in a state of such
complete silence around me, that this voice which suddenly responded
to my soul, seemed to me to come down from heaven; it came from a
land of liberty. After having passed a few days with Madame
Recamier, without hearing my banishment at all spoken of, I
persuaded myself that Bonaparte had r