At this period it was that she organized her oeuvre des émigrés; a stupendous work, if we consider that there were 40,000 persons to assist, and 16,000,000 francs the moderate sum estimated as requisite for carrying it out with success. Unfortunately the details in figures of this work have been lost; for Madame de Montagu carefully noted down every fraction received, from what quarter it came, and how expended. But we know that the correspondence alone cost annually about 500 francs during the four years it existed—that is, from 1796 to 1800. She collected money in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and England; and beside distributing pecuniary assistance, solicited employment for persons of all ages and sexes. She had children to get into schools, young women to place as governesses, drawings and needlework to sell, etc. All this was done without quitting her quiet home on the borders of Lake Ploen, or giving up one domestic occupation. When pressed for time she sat up at night. Winter only increased her zeal. "The colder it is," said she, "the warmer my heart grows." Indeed, she ended by selling for this work the mourning worn for her mother and sister, which she had kept as a relic; at another time she also sold her prayer-book for the same object. But she never would take from this fund for members of her own family; she preferred working for them, not from pride, but through delicacy. For another charity she once cut off her beautiful hair and sold it, receiving eighty francs.
It is curious to remark that this gentle woman nevertheless had her own firm opinions, even on politics; and though never obtruding, still constantly held them. One is surprised to find also that these opinions were not often identical with the views held by those she most respected and loved. In 1790, M. de Beaune, her father-in-law, alarmed at the turn affairs were taking, wished to emigrate with all his family. His idea was to draw Frenchmen together on neutral [{263}] ground, to place their families in safety, and having gained the support of foreign powers, to return with a good army for the protection of the king and the party of order in the state. Madame de Montagu fully shared these views; but her husband at this time disapproved of emigration, considering it the greatest mistake that could be committed by the king's friends. He hoped to arrive at an understanding between the liberal party and the droite, so as to save both the monarchy and liberty. His two elder brothers-in-law, MM. de Noailles and la Fayette, went far beyond these views. Without wishing to overturn royalty, their dream was to see it based on republican principles.
So indignant did this render M. de Beaune, that he broke with them entirely, and wished Madame de Montagu to give up seeing her two sisters, who naturally embraced their husbands' opinions. She could by no means understand that persons were to be proscribed because of their political opinions; but, not to irritate M. de Beaune farther, she would not receive Madame de la Fayette, who offered to pay her a visit at Plauzat in Auvergne, and went instead to meet her privately at a neighbouring inn.
Meanwhile M. de Montagu had yielded to his father's wishes, and at the end of 1791 resolved to emigrate; his choice, however, fell on England rather than Coblentz, where M. de Beaune then was. Madame de Montagu was to accompany her husband. Ere leaving Plauzat she had the happiness of seeing her mother again, but could not summon up courage to tell her of her own approaching departure for England. Both mother and daughter looked on public matters exactly in the same way; there was great similarity between them as to judgment; but the duchesse was not impulsive, like Madame de Montagu. They parted most tenderly, with a presentiment of coming evil; but little did either dream that the guillotine was to separate them for ever.
Then commenced for Madame de Montagu the miseries and heart-burnings of exile. Twice she visited England, spending some time at Richmond and Margate. Griefs began to accumulate; she lost a child for the third time; Marat was lording it over Paris; M. de Montagu in disgust again quitted France, and went to serve under his father's orders on the banks of the Rhine; the massacres of September took place, followed by the fatal battle of Jemappes. The émigrés were henceforth banished. Then the king and queen fell victims to the revolution; Savenay destroyed the last hopes of the Vendeans. In addition to all these public sorrows, and to the pressure of poverty, Madame de Montagu lost another child, her fourth; it seemed as if all her children were born but to die.
All her life she suffered from great delicacy of constitution, and this natural tendency was further increased by her extreme sensibility. Just after losing a child for the first time, and while she was praying, bathed in tears, beside its dead body, a messenger came to tell her that Madame de Grammont had just given birth to her first infant. Madame de Montagu, drying up all traces of her own sorrow, immediately hastened off to congratulate the young mother; but she had scarcely left her sister's room when she fainted in the adjoining apartment. A severe illness followed, the precursor of many others; indeed, it may be said that her whole life was passed amid moral and physical suffering. Death was ever busy in her family.
She lost her only son Attale, a fine young man, just when he had attained his twenty-eighth year; and in this case sorrow was aggravated by the circumstance of his dying through accident—a gun went off in his hand. No fears, however, were entertained at first. Madame de Montagu herself was only recovering by slow degrees from [{264}] a dangerous malady; a sudden and fatal termination had occurred for her son, and she knew it not. They dared not tell her. But the next day, being Trinity Sunday, Madame de Grammont suggested that she should receive holy communion, though still in bed: the priest, in presenting the sacred host, invited her to meditate on the passion, and especially on the sentiments of the Blessed Virgin at the foot of the cross, where her son died.
Madame de Montagu immediately understood him. Her husband then brought to her bedside the young widow and three orphan girls. Attale's mother wept in silence, at length ejaculating: "Thy decree, O Lord, has thus ordained, and I submit. But strike no more, for I am ready to faint beneath the weight of my cross." But she reproached herself afterward for this.
Often before had she endured the mother's agony; but this was the hardest blow of all. And Madame de Montagu lived on to see many loved ones go before her; father, and husband, and several other relations preceded her to the tomb; for she lingered till 1839. Among them was M. de la Fayette, who died in 1834, having survived his wife twenty-seven years. Madame de Montagu and all the members of her family requested to be buried at Picpus.
This spot was hallowed to them by sacred memories, for there reposed above thirteen hundred victims of the revolution. Its continued existence as a cemetery was due to the pious labors of Madame d'Ayen's daughters. In the days of terror, a pit had been dug outside the Barrière du Trône, and all the persons immolated in that quarter of Paris were promiscuously thrown into it. The savage mode of proceeding has been related. As each head fell from the guillotine, it was cast, together with the body, still dressed, into a large barrel painted red. Each night after the executions were over, these barrels were taken to Picpus, and their contents indiscriminately emptied into the pit. The ground had formerly belonged to an Augustinian convent. There, it could not be doubted, lay the remains of Madame d'Ayen and her daughter. Madame de Montagu and Madame de la Fayette, on their return to France, ardently wished to raise a monument to their memory; but on discovering the immense number of victims interred together, it seemed more desirable that the undertaking should be of a less private nature. By their joint efforts, many families of other victims were attracted to the pious enterprise; souls devoted to prayer gathered round; the old convent and church of Picpus rose from their ruins. A cemetery was constructed round that gloomy pit, where not even a name had been scrawled to recall the memory of those who slept below. Madame d'Ayen's three daughters could at least enjoy the sad consolation of praying near their mother's tomb.