Je n’ai vu luire encor que les feux du matin;
Je veux achever ma journée.”
* * * * *
Another of her fellow-prisoners, equally fascinated by her and able to render her more practical service, was M. de Montrond, a witty, light-hearted sceptic, a friend of Talleyrand.
It having come to his knowledge that a plot was preparing for another massacre in the prisons on pretence of conspiracy among the prisoners, whose names and lives were at the mercy of the spies within and the police and gaolers without, he contrived by paying a hundred louis to get his own and Mme. de Coigny’s liberation, and after the Terror was over they married and went to England for their honeymoon. At the end of two months they were tired of each other, came back to Paris and were divorced, and the Baronne de Montrond again resumed the name of Coigny.
When the Restoration took place and her father returned she devoted herself to him during the rest of his life; and as her first husband returned too and had an appointment in the household of Louis XVIII., she was always liable to meet him as well as her second husband in society.
In spite of all her social success hers was not a disposition to be happy. She was too excitable, emotional, and unreasonable. A liaison with a brother of Garat brought her much unhappiness, and her unfortunate marriages and love affairs caused the Emperor Napoleon to say to her one day at some court entertainment—
“Aimez vous toujours les hommes?”
To which she replied—
“Oui, Sire, quand ils sont polis.”