However this may be, Madame de Staël’s fears were not long in reasserting themselves. Too impatient to wait for the passport, she started with her son and daughter for Galicia, having extracted from a friend the promise of hurrying after her as soon as the expected paper arrived. In her _Memoirs_ she admits that this was a mistake; for at Vienna she had friends to intercede in her favor, while in Galicia there was no shield between herself and the servility towards France of inferior officials. As a consequence she was driven along her route by the unceasing admonitions to “move on” of the police. Her immediate goal was Lanzut—the home of her friends Prince and Princess Lubomirski. Here she was to meet Rocca, who had also proceeded on his way, but disguised. At some point of the road her passport reached her. This was a ray of light; and a letter from Madame Récamier, which overtook her somewhere near Olmutz, was another. But, as a rule, her sensations were all gloomy. The discomforts of her journey through such a country and under such circumstances increased her sadness, to which the finishing touch was put by the aspect of the desolated countries, and of the overtaxed, starving populations withering beneath the Napoleonic blight, and mingling curses on the oppressor with prayers to heaven for relief. These tragic pictures were ludicrously, but by no means reassuringly relieved by the sight of placards, in the various towns where the passports had to be examined, which ordained that Madame de Staël was to be submitted, wherever she appeared, to the surveillance of the police! At Lanzut she had been informed that she was not to stay more than twenty-four hours. This, however, was previous to her receiving the Russian passport. With that to show, she hoped for more indulgence. The hope was vain, for at Lanzut a police agent presented himself, having received orders from his chief, the Governor of the district, to see that Madame de Staël did not remain more than eight hours at the Lubomirski’s Château. And when she left, he followed her carriage in a calèche, thus causing her much alarm lest Rocca, on joining them, should be recognized.