The next day Tallien arrived, appointed by the Commune to accompany her to the barriers. Several suspected aristocrats were present when he was announced. Most people under such circumstances would have taken care to be found alone; but Madame de Staël remained undaunted to the end. She simply begged Tallien to be discreet, and he fortunately proved so. A few more difficulties had to be encountered before she was fairly in safety; but at last she reached the pure air and peaceful scenes of the Jura.
CHAPTER VI.
MADAME DE STAËL RETIRES TO COPPET.
Madame de Staël arrived at Coppet about the beginning of September, 1792. The life there, after her recent experiences in Paris, so far from seeming to her one of welcome rest, fretted her ardent spirit almost beyond endurance. She longed to be back in France, even under the shadow of the guillotine, anywhere but in front of the lake, with its inexorable beauty and maddening calm.
“The whole of Switzerland inspires me with magnificent horror,” she wrote to her husband, who was still in Sweden. “Sometimes I think that if I were in Paris with a title which they would be forced to respect, I might be of use to a number of individuals, and with that hope I would brave everything. I perceive, with some pain, that the thing which least suits me in the world is this peaceful and rustic life. I have put down my horses for economy’s sake, and because I feel my solitude less when I do not see anybody.”
By “anybody” it is to be presumed that she meant the good Swiss, whose expressions of horror, doubtless as monotonous as reiterated, must have been irritating to one whose single desire night and day, was to cast herself into the arena, there to combat and to save. One outlet she found for her activity in perpetual plans for enabling her friends, and often her enemies, to escape from Paris.
The scheme which she projected was to find some man or woman, as the case might be, who would enter France with Swiss passports, certificates, etc., and after getting these properly visés, would hand them over to the person who was to be saved.
Nothing could be simpler, Madame de Staël averred; and as she provided money, time, thought, energy, and presumably infected her agents with a little of her own enthusiasm, her efforts were often successful. Among those who engaged her attention were Mathieu de Montmorency, François de Jaucourt, the Princess de Poix and Madame de Simiane.