CHAPTER IX
A wandering life—“The tyrant is no more”—Marriage of Henriette—Hamburg—Berlin—Antwerp—Brussels—Returns to France—Terrible changes—Shattered fortune—Literary success—The Empire—Napoleon—Mme. de Genlis and her friends—Death of Mme. de Montesson.
IT will not be possible in a biography so short as this, to give a detailed account of the wandering, adventurous life led by Mme. de Genlis after the severance of her connection with the Orléans family.
She had now only her niece, Henriette, with her, and they set out again upon their travels. M. de Valence, after serving the revolutionists, had been proscribed by them, and was living in exile at Utrecht. There, accordingly, they joined him, and set up a joint ménage, first there, afterwards at Altona and at Hamburg.
It was whilst Mme. de Genlis was in Altona that she heard of the fall of Robespierre and the deliverance of her daughter. She was then living in a boarding-house, or inn, kept by a certain Mme. Plock, where she spent a good deal of time; and about one o’clock one morning she was sitting up in her room, writing, when she suddenly heard a violent knocking at her door, and the voice of M. de Kercy, a peaceable friendly acquaintance of hers, whose room was close by, called out—
“Open the door! Open the door! I must embrace you.”
Thinking he must have lost his senses she did nothing of the sort, and again he cried out—
“It is you who will embrace me! Open the door! Open the door!”
At length she did so, and M. de Kercy, flinging himself upon her neck, exclaimed—