Pauline received a letter from Rosalie, written on the night of August 10th. They had left the hôtel de Noailles, which was too dangerous, and were living in concealment. “My father,” wrote Rosalie, “only left the King at the threshold of the Assembly, and has returned to us safe and sound ... but I had no news of M. de Grammont till nine o’clock in the evening.... I got a note from my husband telling me he was safe (he had hidden in a chimney). Half an hour later he arrived himself.... I hasten to write to you at the close of this terrible day....”
The Duc d’Ayen succeeded in getting away to Switzerland, and the Prince de Poix, who was arrested and being conducted to the Abbaye, contrived to escape on the way, remained hidden in Paris for six months, and then passed over undiscovered to England, where Pauline met him afterwards.
Pauline, who firmly believed in the ultimate success of the royalist army, and whose heart and soul were with the gallant soldiers of Condé and the heroic peasants of La Vendée, waited at Aix-la-Chapelle, studying English and German and corresponding with her mother and sisters under cover of an old servant.
It was a thousand pities that they did not emigrate like the rest, but as they were not actually proscribed, they did not like to leave the old Duke and Duchess de Noailles, who were feeble and dependent on their care.
La Fayette, accused and proscribed by his late admirers, had found himself so unwilling to trust to their tender mercies that he fled to Liége. But having made himself equally obnoxious to both sides, he had no sooner escaped from the hands of his friends than he fell into those of his enemies, and was arrested by an Austrian patrol and detained, arbitrarily say his friends—but why arbitrarily?—was taken to Wesel, and had now to undergo a mild form of the suffering he had caused to so many others.
The Vicomte de Noailles was also proscribed, and fled to England, whence he kept writing to his wife to join him; but she would not leave her mother and grandmother.
Amongst the emigrés themselves there were disputes. Those who had emigrated at first looked down upon the later ones, considering that they had done so, not out of principle, but to save their own lives. They, on the other hand, maintained that if there had been no emigration at all things would never have got to such a pitch. M. de Montagu openly wished he had stayed and been with the royal family during the attack on the Tuileries.
M. de Montagu was now with the troops of the Duc de Bourbon, and hearing he was to pass through Liége, Pauline went there to see him, and waited at an inn to which she knew he would go. Though he was overjoyed at this unexpected meeting, he had to leave the same day, as an engagement was imminent, and he remarked that those who were accused of being the last to join the army must not be last on the battlefield.
Sadly she returned to Aix-la-Chapelle, where the news which she had heard at Liége of the September massacres had already arrived, and where, besides their own horror and grief, the emigrés had to listen to the disgust and contempt everywhere expressed by those of other nations for a country in which such atrocities could be perpetuated without the slightest resistance.
At the end of September she heard that Adrienne had been thrown into prison. She trembled for her fate and for that of her mother, Louise, and Rosalie. The campaign ended disastrously for the Royalists, and for days she did not know the fate of her husband and father-in-law. However, M. de Beaune arrived, and a few days later M. de Montagu.