When the next morning dawned a fresh element of terror had invaded the public mind. The news of the fall of Longwy and Verdun had arrived and Paris was in effervescence. Again in all the sections the tocsin was sounding; and everybody whose own life was his chief preoccupation kept as quiet as possible. But Madame de Staël could not keep quiet—that was impossible for her at all times—and at this moment the image paramount in her mind was that of the poor Abbé waiting anxiously at his rendezvous—perhaps only to be discovered if his generous deliverer delayed.
Turning a deaf ear to all remonstrance, she started in a travelling-carriage drawn by six horses, and accompanied by her servants in gala livery. This was an unfortunate inspiration. Instead of filling the minds of the vulgar with awe, as she had vainly hoped, it aroused their vigilant suspicions. The carriage had hardly passed under the portals of the hotel before it was surrounded by a furious crowd of old women, “risen from hell,” as Madame de Staël energetically expressed it, who shrieked out that she was carrying away the gold of the nation. This intelligent outcry brought a new contingent of exasperated patriots of both sexes, who ordered the fugitive Ambassadress to be conveyed to the Assembly of the Section nearest at hand.
She did not lose her presence of mind, but on descending from the carriage found an opportunity of bidding the Abbé’s servant rejoin his master and tell him of what had happened. This step proved to be a very dangerous one. The President of the Section informed Madame de Staël that she was accused of seeking to take away proscribed royalists, and that he must proceed to a roll-call of her servants. One of them was missing, naturally, having been despatched to save his own master; and the consequence was a peremptory order to Madame de Staël to proceed to the Hôtel de Ville under charge of a gendarme. Such a command was not calculated to inspire her with any sentiment but fear. Several people had already been massacred on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville; and although no woman had yet been sacrificed to popular fury, there was no guarantee for such immunity lasting; and, as a point of fact, the Princess de Lamballe fell the very next day.
Madame de Staël’s passage from the Faubourg Saint Germain to the Hôtel de Ville lasted three hours. Her carriage was led at a foot-pace through an immense crowd, which greeted her with reiterated cries of “Death!” It was not herself they detested, she says, but the evidences of her luxury; for the news of the morning had brought more opprobrium than ever on the execrated name of aristocrat. Fortunately, the gendarme who was inside the carriage was touched by his prisoner’s situation and her delicate condition of health, and her prayers, and promised to do what he could to defend her. By degrees her courage rose. She knew that the worse moment must be that in which she would reach the Place de Grève; but by the time she arrived there aversion for the mob had almost overcome in her every feeling but disdain.
She mounted the steps of the Hôtel de Ville between a double row of pikes, and one man made a movement to strike her. Thanks to the prompt interposition of the friendly gendarme, she was able, however, to reach the presence of Robespierre in safety. The room in which she found him was full of an excited crowd of men, women and children, all emulously shrieking, “Vive la Nation!”
The Swedish Ambassadress was just beginning to protest officially against the treatment she had met with, when Manuel arrived on the scene. Never was any apparition more opportune. Greatly astonished to see his late illustrious visitor in such a position, he promptly undertook to answer for her until the Commune had made up its mind what to do with her; and conveying her and her maid to his own house, shut them up in the same cabinet where Madame de Staël had pleaded for Jaucourt.
There they remained for six hours, “dying of hunger, thirst, and fear.” The windows of the room looked out upon the Place de Grève, and consequently offered the spectacle of bands of yelling murderers returning from the prisons “with bare and bleeding arms.”
Madame de Staël’s travelling carriage had remained in the middle of the square. She expected to see it pillaged; but a man in the uniform of the National Guard came to the rescue and passed two hours in successfully defending the luggage.
This individual turned out to be the redoubtable Santerre. He introduced himself later in the day to Madame de Staël, and took credit for his conduct on the ground of the respect with which M. Necker had inspired him when distributing corn to the starving population of Paris.
In the evening Manuel, pallid with horror at the events of that awful day, took Madame de Staël back to her own house, through streets of which the obscurity was only relieved at moments by the lurid glare of torches. He told her that he had procured a new passport for herself and her maid alone; and that she was to be escorted to the frontier by a gendarme.