"I regret extremely, madam, that you have forced me to begin my correspondence with you by an act of severity; it would have been much more agreeable to me to have only had to offer you the assurance of the high consideration with which I have the honor to be, madam,
"Your most humble, and most obedient servant,
Signed the DUKE of ROVIGO.
"P. S, I have reasons, madam, for mentioning to you that the ports of Lorient, La Rochelle, Bourdeaux, and Rochefort, are the only ones in which you can embark. I request you to let me know which of them you select*."
* This postscript is easily understood; its object was to prevent me from going to England.
The stale hypocrisy with which I was told that the air of this country did not agree with me, and the denial of the real cause of the suppression of my book, are worthy of remark. In fact, the minister of police had shown more frankness in expressing himself verbally respecting me: he asked, why I never named the emperor or the army in my work on Germany? On its being objected that the work being purely literary, I could not well have introduced such subjects, "Do you think," then replied the minister, "that we have made war for eighteen years in Germany, and that a person of such celebrity should print a book upon it, without saying a word about us? This book shall be destroyed, and the author deserves to be sent to Vincennes."
On receiving the letter of the minister of police, I paid no attention to any part but that passage of it which interdicted me the ports of the Channel. I had already learned, that suspecting my intention of going to England, they would endeavour to prevent me. This new mortification was really above my strength to bear; on quitting my native country, I must go to that of my adoption; in banishing myself from the friends of my whole life, I required at least to find those friends of whatever is good and noble, with whom, without knowing them personally, the soul always sympathises. I saw at once all that supported my imagination crumbling to pieces; for a moment longer I would have embarked on board any vessel bound for America, in the hope of her being captured on her passage; but I was too much shaken to decide at once on so strong a resolution; and as the two alternatives of America and Coppet were the only ones that were left me, I determined on accepting the latter; for a profound sentiment always attracted me to Coppet, in spite of the disagreeables I was there subjected to.
My two sons both endeavoured to see the emperor at Fontainbleau, where he then was; they were told they would be arrested if they remained there; a fortiori, I was interdicted from going to it myself. I was obliged to return into Switzerland from Blois, where I was, without approaching Paris nearer than forty leagues. The minister of police had given notice, in corsair terms, that at thirty-eight leagues I was a good prize. In this manner, when the emperor exercises the arbitrary power of banishment, neither the exiled persons, nor their friends, nor even their children, can reach his presence to plead the cause of the unfortunates who are thus torn from the objects of their affection and their habits; and these sentences of exile, which are now irrevocable, particularly where women are the objects, and which the emperor himself has rightly termed proscriptions, are pronounced without the possibility of making any justification be heard, supposing always that the crime of having displeased the emperor admits of any.
Although the forty leagues were ordered me, I was necessitated to pass through Orleans, a very dull town, but inhabited by several very pious ladies, who had retired thither for an asylum. In walking about the town on foot, I stopped before the monument erected to the memory of Joan of Arc: certainly, thought I to myself, when she delivered France from the power of the English, that same France was much more free, much more France than it is at present. One feels a singular sensation in wandering through a town, where you neither know, nor are known to a soul. I felt a kind of bitter enjoyment in picturing to myself my isolated situation in its fullest extent, and in still looking at that France which I was about to quit, perhaps for ever, without speaking to a person, or being diverted from the impression which the country itself made upon me. Occasionally persons passing stopped to look at me, from the circumstance I suppose of my countenance having, in spite of me, an expression of grief; but they soon went on again, as it is long since mankind have been accustomed to witness persons suffering.
At fifty leagues from the Swiss frontier, France is bristled with citadels, houses of detention, and towns serving as prisons; and every where you see nothing but individuals deprived of their liberty by the will of one man, conscripts of misfortune, all chained at a distance from the places where they would have wished to live. At Dijon, some Spanish prisoners, who had refused to take the oath, regularly came every day to the market place to feel the sun at noon, as they then regarded him rather as their countryman; they wrapt themselves up in a mantle, frequently in rags, but which they knew how to wear with grace, and they gloried in their misery, as it arose from their boldness; they hugged themselves in their sufferings, as associating them with the misfortunes of their intrepid country. They were sometimes seen going into a coffee house, solely to read the newspaper, in order to penetrate the fate of their friends through the lies of their enemies; their countenances were then immoveable, but not without expression, exhibiting strength under the command of their will. Farther on, at Auxonne, was the residence of the English prisoners, who had the day before saved from fire, one of the houses of the town where they were kept confined. At Besancon, there were more Spaniards. Among the French exiles to be met with in every part of France, an angelic creature inhabited the citadel of Besancon, in order not to quit her father. For a long period, and amidst every sort of danger, Mademoiselle de Saint Simon shared the fortunes of him who had given her birth.
At the entrance of Switzerland, on the top of the mountains which separate it from France, you see the castle of Joux, in which prisoners of state are detained, whose names frequently never reach the ear of their relations. In this prison Toussaint Louverture actually perished of cold; he deserved his fate on account of his cruelty, but the emperor had the least right to inflict it upon him, as he had engaged to guarantee to him his life and liberty. I passed a day at the foot of this castle, during very dreadful weather, and I could not help thinking of this negro transported all at once into the Alps, and to whom this residence was the hell of ice; I thought of the more noble beings, who had been shut up there, of those who were still groaning in it, and I said to myself also that if I was there, I should never quit it with life. It is impossible to convey an idea to the small number of free nations which remain upon the earth, of that absence of all security, the habitual state of the human creatures who live under the empire of Napoleon. In other despotic governments there are laws, and customs, and a religion, which the sovereign never infringes, however absolute he may be; but in France, and in Europe France, as every thing is new, the past can be no guarantee, and every thing may be feared as well as hoped according as you serve, or not, the interests of the man who dares to propose himself, as the sole object of the existence of the whole human race.