“I am free only on Sunday. If you think it well for me to come and see you, answer at once, and the day after to-morrow I will be with you.
“Please be prudent and tell no one of my letter, etc.”
Curiosity to see him rather than any hope of hearing anything useful decided me to allow him to come. He came, and his constrained manner and ambiguous language soon betraying to me his deceitful plot, I treated him with icy coldness, and made him clearly see that for the future I would have nothing more to do with him. I heard afterwards that his numerous misdeeds had forced him to leave France.
In the meantime I had written to England with orders that the last power of attorney I had so rashly given to the cheat Cooper should not be honoured.
On the first hint of this being learned by my odious agent, he flew into a frightful rage; loaded me with insults, threatened me with his wrath, and put in a distraint on all my effects, to which I responded by a revocation of all the powers I had given him.
We could no longer live with such a scoundrel; so we left Meudon on September 1, 1828, and established ourselves in the Hôtel Britannique.
I need hardly say that on the day we left we had to submit to the grossest of insults in the shape of a ridiculous and minute examination to make sure, as they said, that we had committed no theft.
As I pretty often reproached the Baron for having caused me so many discomforts, I thought I saw that my words had a great effect on him, and his mind seemed much upset. On the fourth day after our change of residence, I saw him go out with a paper in his hand, and asking him when he would be back, he said: “In an hour’s time.”
While waiting, I went for a walk with my son’s former tutor, and on getting back, my first question to the portress was whether my husband had come in.