Ten Years' Exile / Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son.

by Madame de Staël

ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR.

There is at this place in the manuscript a considerable vacuum, of which I have already given an explanation*, and which I am not sufficiently informed to make the attempt to fill up. But to put the reader in a situation to follow my mother's narrative, I will run over rapidly the principal circumstances of her life during the five years which separate the first part of these memoirs from the second.

* See the Preface.

On her return to Switzerland after the death of her father, the first desire she felt was to seek some alleviation of her sorrow in giving to the world the portrait of him whom she had just lost, and in collecting the last traces of his thoughts. In the Autumn of 1804, she published the MSS. of her father, with a sketch of his public and private character.

My mother's health, impaired by misfortune, necessitated her to go and breathe the air of the South. She set out for Italy. The beautiful sky of Naples, the recollections of antiquity, and the chefs-d'oeuvre of art, opened to her new sources of enjoyment, to which she had been hitherto a stranger; her soul, overwhelmed with grief, seemed to revive to these new impressions, and she recovered sufficient strength to think and to write. During this journey, she was treated by the diplomatic agents of France without favor, but without injustice. She was interdicted a residence at Paris; she was banished from her friends and her habits; but tyranny had not, at least at that time, pursued her beyond the Alps; persecution had not as yet been established as a system, as it was afterwards. I even feel a real pleasure in mentioning that some letters of recommendation sent her by Joseph Bonaparte, contributed to render her residence at Rome more agreeable.

She returned from Italy in the summer of 1805, and passed a year at
Coppet and Geneva, where several of her friends were collected.
During this period she began to write Corinne.

During the following year, her attachment to France, that feeling which had so much power over her heart, made her quit Geneva and go nearer to Paris, to the distance of forty leagues from it, which was still permitted to her. I was then pursuing my studies, preparatory to entering into the Polytechnic school; and from her great goodness to her children, she wished to watch over their education, as near as her exile could allow her. She went in consequence to settle at Auxerre, a little town where she had no acquaintance, but of which the prefect, M. de la Bergerie, behaved to her with great kindness and delicacy.

From Auxerre she went to Rouen: this was approaching some leagues nearer the centre to which all the recollections and all the affections of her youth attracted her. There she could at least receive letters daily from Paris; she had penetrated without any obstacle the inclosure, entrance into which had been forbidden to her; she might hope that the fatal circle would progressively be contracted. Those only who have suffered banishment will be able to understand what passed in her heart. M. de Savoie-Rollin was then prefect of the Lower Seine; it is well known by what glaring injustice he was removed some years afterwards, and I have reason to believe that his friendship for my mother, and the interest which he shewed for her, during her residence at Rouen, were no slight causes of the rigor of which he became the object.

Fouche was still minister of police. His system was, as my mother has said, to do as little evil as possible, the necessity of the object admitted. The Prussian monarchy had just fallen; there was no longer any enemy upon the Continent to struggle with the government of Napoleon; no internal resistance shackled his progress, or could afford the least pretext for the employment of arbitrary measures; what motive, therefore, could he have for prolonging the most gratuitous persecution of my mother? Fouche then permitted her to come and settle at the distance of twelve leagues from Paris, upon an estate belonging to M. de Castellane. There she finished Corinne, and superintended the printing of it. In other respects, the retired life she there led, the extreme prudence of her whole conduct, and the very small number of persons who were not prevented by the fear of disgrace from coming to visit her, might have been sufficient to tranquillize the most suspicious despotism. But all this did not satisfy Bonaparte; he wanted my mother to renounce entirely the employment of her talents, and to interdict her from writing even upon subjects the most unconnected with politics. It will be seen that even at a later period this abnegation was not sufficient to preserve her from a continually increasing persecution.

Scarcely had Corinne made her appearance, when a new exile commenced for my mother, and she saw all the hopes vanish, with which she had for some months been consoling herself. By a fatality which rendered her grief more pungent, it was on the 9th of April, the anniversary of her father's death, that the order which again banished her from her country, and her friends, was signified to her. She returned to Coppet, with a bleeding heart, and the prodigious success of Corinne afforded very little diversion to her sorrow.

Friendship, however, succeeded in accomplishing what literary glory had failed to do; and, thanks to the proofs of affection which she received on her return to Switzerland, the summer passed more agreeably than she could have hoped. Several of her friends left Paris to come to see her, and Prince Augustus of Prussia, to whom peace had restored his liberty, did us the honor to stop several months at Coppet, prior to his return to his native country.

Ever since her journey to Berlin, which had been so cruelly interrupted by the death of her father, my mother had regularly continued the study of the German literature and philosophy; but a new residence in Germany was necessary to enable her to complete the picture of that country, which she proposed to present to France. In the autumn of 1807, she set out for Vienna, and she there once more found, in the society of the Prince de Ligne, of the Princess Lubomirski, &c. &c. that urbanity of manners and ease of conversation, which had such charms in her eyes. The Austrian government, exhausted by the war, had not then the strength to be an oppressor on its own account, and notwithstanding preserved towards France, an attitude which was not without dignity and independence. The objects of Napoleon's hatred might still find an asylum at Vienna; the year she passed in that city, was therefore, the most tranquil one she had enjoyed since the commencement of her exile.

On her return to Switzerland, where she spent two years in writing her reflections upon Germany, she was not long in perceiving the progress which the imperial tyranny was every day making, and the contagious rapidity with which the passion for places, and the fear of disgrace, were spreading. No doubt several friends, both at Geneva and in France, preserved to her during her misfortunes, a courageous and unshaken fidelity; but, whoever had any connection with the government, or aspired to any employment, began to keep at a distance from her house, and to dissuade timid people from approaching it. My mother suffered a great deal from all these symptoms of servitude, which she detected with incomparable sagacity; but the more unhappy she was, the more she felt the desire of diverting from the persons who were about her, the miseries of her situation, and of diffusing around her that life and intellectual movement, which solitude seemed to exclude.

Her talent for declamation was the means of amusement which had the greatest influence over herself, at the same time that it varied the pleasures of her society. It was at this period, and while she was still laboring on her great work on Germany, that she composed and played at Coppet, the greater part of the little pieces which are collected in the 16th volume of her works*, under the title of Dramatic Essays.

* Or the Second Volume of her OEuvres inedites.

Finally, at the beginning of summer, 1810, having finished the three volumes of Germany, she wished to go and superintend the printing of them, at 40 leagues distance from Paris, a distance which was still permitted to her, and where she might hope to see again those of her old friends, whose affections had not bent before the disgrace of the Emperor.

She went, therefore, to reside in the neighbourhood of Blois, in' the old castle of Chaumont-sur-Loire, which had in former times been inhabited by the Cardinal d'Amboise, Diana of Poitiers, and Catherine de Medicis. The present proprietor of this romantic residence, M. Le Ray, with whom my parents were connected by the ties of friendship and business, was then in America. But just at the time we were occupying his chateau, he returned from the United States with his family, and though he was very urgent in wishing us to remain in his house, the more he pressed us politely to do so, the more anxiety we felt, lest we should incommode him. M. de Salaberry relieved us from this embarrassment with the greatest kindness, by placing at our disposal his house at Fosse. At this period my mother's narrative recommences.