Overcome with emotion at first they looked at each other in silence; then, in a voice broken with sobs, Pauline asked, “Did you see them?”
“I had not that happiness,” replied Adrienne.
But she knew all the details of their fate; she had seen M. Grelet and Father Carrichon, who had gone to the scaffold first with their great uncle and aunt, de Mouchy, then with her grandmother, mother, and sister. In the prison of Plessis she had found her cousin, the Duchesse de Duras, daughter of the de Mouchy, and they had consoled each other under the awful calamity that each had undergone. Only a few days more and the Noailles would have been, like their uncle, the Marquis de Noailles, youngest brother of the Duc d’Ayen, saved by the death of Robespierre. The Duchesse de Duras was at once liberated with the rest; but the spite and hatred of Legendre, governor of Plessis, against the very name of La Fayette, caused Adrienne to be detained until the exertions of Mme. de Duras procured her freedom.
She sent her boy to America under the name of Motier, to be brought up under the care of Washington, and then went to Auvergne to see her old aunt, fetch her daughters, and settle her affairs; she had borrowed some money from the Minister of the United States and some diamonds from Rosalie, and had bought back her husband’s château of Chavaniac with the help of the aunt who had brought him up, and who remained there.
She met her daughters in a mountain village near Clermont, and the deep, fervent joy of their restoration to each other out of the shadow of death was increased by finding that the priest had just ventured to reopen the village church, where on the next day, Sunday, they again attended mass in that secluded place, and where Virginie, the younger girl, made her first Communion. And she had seen Rosalie, for Mme. de Grammont heard of her sister’s release, and resolved to join her. Having very little money, and travelling by public conveyances being still unsafe, taking her diamonds she rode a mule with her three children in paniers, and her husband walking by her side. Thus they journeyed by steep mountain paths, or country lanes, but always by the most secluded ways possible. When they reached Paris, Adrienne was gone, but they resumed their primitive travelling, followed her to Auvergne, and came up with her at the little town of Brionde.
Adrienne had brought Pauline a copy of their mother’s will, and, not being an emigrée, had taken possession of the castle and estate of Lagrange, left to herself. She only spent a short time at Altona, and started for Austria.
Her farm near the Baltic did not altogether satisfy Mme. de Tessé, and before long they again moved, to be in the neighbourhood of a residence she had heard of, and hoped to get after a time.
It was by the lake of Ploen, and they were obliged to pass the winter at the little town of that name, for it was October when the cavalcade arrived—M. and Mme. de Tessé, the Montagu, the de Mun, and the priests, to whom another had been added.
There Pauline had a son, and to her great joy he and the children she afterwards had lived to grow up. The farm Mme. de Tessé wished for was called Wittmold, and lay at the other side of the lake upon a plain covered with pasture and ponds, as far as the eye could reach. The house stood on a promontory jutting out into the lake, and was surrounded by fields, apple trees, and pine woods. They crossed the lake in boats, and established themselves there. They could live almost entirely upon the produce of the place, for there was plenty of game, plenty of fish in the lake: the dairy farm paid extremely well, the pasture produced rich, delicious milk; they had a hundred and twenty cows, and made enormous quantities of butter, which they sold at Hamburg. It was pleasant enough in the summer, but in winter the lake was frozen, the roads covered with snow, and the cold wind from the Baltic raved round the house. However, they were thankful for the shelter of a home that most of their friends would have envied, and they lived peacefully there for four years, during which Pauline organised and carried on a great work of charity which, with the assistance of one or two influential friends, soon spread all over Europe. It was a kind of society with branches in different countries, to collect subscriptions for the relief of the French exiles, and it involved an enormous amount of letter-writing, for, if the subscriptions poured into Wittmold, so did letters of entreaty, appealing for help. But Pauline was indefatigable not only in allotting the different sums of money, but in finding employment, placing young girls as governesses, selling drawings and needlework, &c.
M. de Beaune paid them one or two visits, and in October, 1797, La Fayette, his wife, and daughters, were released from captivity, and arrived at Wittmold with his two faithful aides-de-camp. The brother of one, the Comte de Latour-Maubourg, soon after married Anastasie, his eldest daughter.