Lives of the most eminent literary and scientific men of France, Vol. 2 (of 2)Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Science
Lives of the most eminent literary and scientific men of France, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Authors, French -- Biography
de Grève, and assassins passed from the prisons, their arms bare and
covered with blood, uttering horrible shouts. Her carriage remained in
the square. The crowd wished to pillage it: it was defended by Santerre.
He respected the daughter of Necker, whose exertions to victual Paris
during the scarcity he had witnessed; and besides he made this task his
pretext for not doing his duty in protecting the prisoners. He boasted
to Madame de Staël of the service he rendered her; but she could not
help reminding him of the manner in which he ought to have been
employed. Manuel exclaimed, as he entered, "Ah! how glad I am I set your
two friends at liberty yesterday!" When night came on he conveyed her
home in his carriage. The lamps were not lighted in the streets, but men
passed with torches, whose flare occasioned more terror than darkness
itself. The following day she was allowed to depart with her maid only,
and a gendarme to conduct her as far as the frontier, so to make sure
that she should take with her none of the unfortunate outlaws doomed to
death. Tallien conducted her to the barrier. After some difficulties it
was passed. "Leaving the capital," she writes, "the tempestuous waves
grew calmer, and the mountains of Jura gave no token of the frightful
tumults of which Paris was the theatre." And there she found calm refuge
beneath her father's roof. Such were the scenes that awaited the early
womanhood of madame de Staël:--the sight of every cruel and horrible
passion in action in others,--pity, fear, and generous self-devotion
excited to their height in her own heart,--harrowing grief, when those
whom she loved were butchered,--throbs of transport, when she felt that
she had secured their safety. Had she been of a concentrated
disposition, such scenes and emotions must have given sublimity to her
character. As it was, it confirmed the active generosity and warm
benevolence of her disposition; it gave animation to her expression of
every sad and heart-moving feeling; while to her credit it must be said,
that, even in the midst of such iniquitous and cruel scenes, she
gathered no misanthropy, no gall, no hatred, and no revenge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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