Filled with alarm and sorrow, she hurried to the Princess Dolgorouki, where Count Cobentzel brought them constant news from the palace, where desperate but fruitless efforts were being made to revive the Empress.
This young Prince possessed talent and spirit. Had not his life been sacrificed, the weak, unfortunate Louis XVI. would never have been King, and who can tell how vast might have been the difference in the course of events?Yes. A fine reward for a poor creature who perhaps has not bread to eat, isnt it? I shall have to go to-morrow to hear the evidence ... and again in a month for what they call the coronation. It might amuse you to see it once.... But the strangest thing is the importance these good people [378] attach to the ceremony, and the exultation of the relations of the rosire. One would think they had gained a valuable prize. It may amuse one for the moment, but when one has to see it every year, it is a ridiculous thing for a reasonable man.That she persistently refused proves how much all these professions were worth, and this time she does in her memoirs blame herself for her conduct; in fact, she declares that she felt ever afterwards a remorse that never left her, and that would be eternal; as she considered herself the cause of the death of her husband. If she had gone with him as he entreated her to do and as she acknowledged that she ought to have done, she could have induced him to leave France with her, he had sufficient money to enable them to live comfortably abroad, and his life would have been saved.In the Souvenirs, written in after years, when her ideas and principles had been totally changed by her experience of the Revolution, the beginning of which had so delighted her, she was evidently ashamed of the line she had taken, and anxious to explain it away as far as possible.Returning home one day after dinner with Diderot, dAlembert, Helvetius, and others of their set, he seemed to be so out of spirits that his wife asked if anything were the matter.The name, applied to Trzia, was a cruel injustice, and, with the ingratitude so often to be met with, now that she was less powerful and people were not in need of her protection, they forgot or neglected or slandered her, and that accursed name was frequently to be heard.
