"To what purpose?" asked Georges. "Is not now the hour of our death?"
Cadoudal insisted upon dying first, lest his comrades should imagine that he could survive them.—B.
[376] The Monk of Saint-Gall (circa 884) is the anonymous author of the half-genuine, half-fabulous Gestes de Charlemagne.—T.
[377] M. Necker died at Coppet on the 9th of April 1804.—B.
[378] M. Récamier's ruin happened two years after the death of M. Necker, in the autumn of 1806. It was produced chiefly through the political and financial condition of Spain, by which M. Récamier's banking-house was seriously embarrassed. He asked the Bank of France for a loan of a million francs, which would have saved him; the loan was refused, and the crash came. Madame Récamier sold her jewellery to the last piece; the plate was sold; the house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc was bought by M. Mosselmann. So great was the confidence and esteem of the creditors for M. Récamier that they entrusted him with the liquidation of his own estate.—B.
[379] 17 November 1806.—B.
[380] Madame Récamier lost her mother on the 20th January of 1807. Her first six months of mourning were spent in profound seclusion; in the middle of the summer of 1807, she consented, at Madame de Staël's entreaties, to go to Coppet.—B.
[381] Prince Augustus was taken prisoner, not at Eylau, but at the Battle of Saalfeld (10 October 1806). The young Prince was only twenty-four years of age; he was five years younger than Madame Récamier.—B.
[382] MADAME DE GENLIS, Mademoiselle de Clermont (Paris, 1802).—T.
[383] Athénaïs, ou le Château de Coppet en 1807 was published in 1832, two years after the Comtesse de Genlis' death. It was written when she was over eighty years of age.—T.