Her plans disturbed, hope dead within her, she returned to Coppet, almost resigned to pass her life in the château; but the hour had passed away when she was allowed to enjoy the tribute of visits from foreigners of distinction, and to gather round her such friends as she best loved. A series of the most tormenting and cruel persecutions were instituted, that acting on an imagination easily disquieted, and on a temperament that needed the atmosphere of joy to feel at ease, drove her into a state of intense and uninterrupted suffering. She gave up all idea, which must always be agreeable to an author, of publishing; she scarcely dared write. All her acquaintance as well as friends were looked on with unfavourable eyes. She could not venture to ask a guest to dinner; she was so afraid of compromising the whole family of any one who came near her. The prefect of Geneva was changed as being too favourably disposed. The new magistrate urged her to eulogise Napoleon as the sure means of putting an end to all her annoyances: would she only celebrate the birth of the king of Rome? She replied that she did not know how to do so: she could only express her hopes that he would have a good nurse. The prefect took his leave, and never came near her again. Her children were forbidden to enter France. She went to Aix, in Savoy, for the benefit of the health of her youngest son; she was ordered to return; she was advised never to go further than two leagues from Coppet. William Schlegel, whom she had engaged to live with her to assist in the education of her children, was ordered to quit her château. He had published a work, in which he showed a preference to the Phædra of Euripides over that of Racine; he was judged anti-Gallican; and she was told that his society was injurious to her. A thousand terrors seized her. Confined within narrow precincts, deprived of her friends, she began to fear a prison, where she would have been left to perish, miserable and forgotten. She resolved to escape--it was difficult to choose a route. She was told that she would be arrested on her way through any country under the dominion of the French. She passed her life, she says, in studying a map of Europe, to find how she could escape beyond the wide-spread poison tree of Napoleon's power. She traced a route through the Tyrol on her way to Russia and Sweden, and thence to England. A thousand difficulties presented themselves for the execution of this plan, but it was her best.