Aix-la-Chapelle was crowded with emigrés, among whom she found many friends and relations. They met chiefly in the salon of her cousin, the Comtesse d’Escars; every one had relations with the army of Condé, in prison, in deadly peril, or even already murdered. The society was chiefly composed of old men, priests and women, whose lives were a perpetual struggle with poverty hitherto unknown to them.
In the ill-furnished, dilapidated hôtel salon of Mme. d’Escars Pauline came in the evenings, after a day spent in the poor lodging upon the scanty food she could get, passing her time in reading, in devotion, and in doing what she could to help others.
There she heard continually of the terrible scenes going on in Paris, and incidentally got news of one or other of her family, and now and then she received a letter from one of them with details which filled her with grief and terror.
Her great uncle, the old Maréchal de Mouchy, had never left the King on the terrible day of the 20th of June, but had stood by him making a rampart of his own body to protect him from the hordes of ruffians who were invading the palace; her father, on hearing of these events, had left his refuge in Switzerland and hurried back to the King; so did her cousin, the Prince de Poix. Both of them had sympathised with the earlier Liberal ideas at first; but now, horrified at the fearful development of their principles, they bitterly regretted their folly and came to place their lives at the service of their King.
The Duc d’Ayen spent the terrible night of August 9th in the Tuileries, and both of them followed the King to the Assembly. Even M. de Grammont, who had been strongly infected with the ideas of the time, and even belonged to the National Guard, ran great risk of his life by his support of the King on that day.
As to La Fayette, he had rushed to Paris, violently reproached the Assembly for the attack on the Tuileries, demanded the punishment of the Jacobins, and offered to the King the services which were of no value, and which, as long as they had been of any use, had been at the disposal of his enemies.
Again one remembers the words of Napoleon to the grandson of Necker, who said that his grandfather defended the King—
“Defended the King! A fine defence, truly! You might as well say that if I give a man poison, and then, when he is in the agonies of death, present him with an antidote, I wish to save him. For that is the way your grandfather defended Louis XVI.”
The same remarks apply equally to La Fayette, whom, by the bye, Napoleon could not bear, and would have nothing to do with.