THREE:How thankful I was to find myself alone in the room occupied first by my brother, then by Buonaparte, to which I came back after so long an absence: absolute solitude was a necessity to my mind. I prayed and groaned without interruption, which relieved me; then I resolved irrevocably to act in such a manner as never to expose France or my family to the Revolution which had just ended.... I lay down in the bed of Buonaparte, it had also been that of the martyr king, and at first I could not sleep ... like Richard III. I saw in a vision those I had lost, and in the distance enveloped in a sanguinary cloud I seemed to see menacing phantoms.It was naturally impossible that Mme. de Genlis should be a conspicuous member of the Orlans household and yet not mix herself up with intimacies and friendships amongst the Revolutionists, especially as some of them at that time had not shown themselves in their true colours. She corresponded with Barze, who wrote to her about her books, and whose letters were full of the simple life of the peasants and the beauties of nature in the Pyrenees, but who soon developed into one of the monsters of the Terror. She could not be blamed for that, as she did not know his real character; but the same cannot be said with regard to her friendship with Ption, whom she received in her salon and for whom she declared that up to the time of the Kings murder she had a true esteem. Now Ption was a vulgar, brutal ruffian, as any one knows who has read the account of his behaviour during the miserable affair of the return of the royal family from Varennes; and yet after that she accepted his escort to England, and said that she remained persuaded that he had a most honest, upright soul, and the most virtuous principles. There are some people who make the very names of virtue and duty obnoxious to one, and of this number was certainly Mme. de Genlis. In spite of her outcries about the injustice and falsehood of the suspicions and odium attached to her concerning her conduct at this time, and causing her afterwards considerable annoyance and difficulties, her friendships with and praises of such characters as Philippe-galit, Ption, and others, added to the way in [425] which she displayed her rejoicing in the earlier excesses of the Revolutionary party, and her constant association with the authors of the disgraceful libels and attacks upon the Queen and royal family, amply justified whatever might be said against her.
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ONE:And why?It was whilst Mme. de Genlis was in Altona that she heard of the fall of Robespierre and the deliverance of her daughter. She was then living in a boarding-house, or inn, kept by a certain Mme. Plock, where she spent a good deal of time; and about one oclock one morning she was sitting up in her room, writing, when she suddenly heard a [450] violent knocking at her door, and the voice of M. de Kercy, a peaceable friendly acquaintance of hers, whose room was close by, called out
ONE:When I was alone I opened the mysterious letter, and by the light of my lamp I read as follows:After her brothers death she lost much of her prestige, and held her salon in the rue St. Honor, most of her habitus, after her death, transferring themselves to the house of Mme. Geoffrin.
ONE:
