Madame de Staël suffered dreadfully during the period that Maximilien Robespierre headed the populace in the Champ de Mars. All the brilliant society to which she had been accustomed from the cradle were proscribed, or hiding in holes or corners of the city they had made so glorious. Liberty, the theme of her childish pen, had been metamorphosed into a bloodthirsty tyrant. Before midnight on the 9th of August, 1792, the forty-eight tocsins of the sections began to sound. Madame de Staël might have secured her own safety by a flight into Switzerland, but she could not leave Paris while her friends were in danger, and she might be of use to them. The words “Swedish Embassy,” on her door, gave her some security. By her passionate eloquence and consummate diplomacy she saved M. de Narbonne, and several other distinguished persons. On the morning of the 2nd of September, she set out from Paris in all the state of an ambassadress. In a few minutes her carriage was stopped, her servants overpowered, and she herself compelled to drive to the Hotel de Ville. When she alighted, one fiend in human shape made a thrust at her, and she was saved from death only by the policeman who accompanied her. She was taken before Robespierre, and her carriage might have been torn to pieces and herself murdered, but for the interference of a republican named Manuel, who on a former occasion had felt the power of her eloquence. Next day Manuel sent her a policeman to escort her to the frontier, and thus Madame de Staël escaped to Coppet. Early in 1793, she went to England, and took up her residence at Juniper Hall, near Richmond, Surrey. No one has been able to assign a very distinct reason for this journey. Perhaps she came simply to breathe the air of liberty, and to become better acquainted with a country she had always loved. At all events, she became the centre of a little colony of French emigrants. Among the refugees were many illustrious people. Their funds were not in a flourishing condition, but they managed to purchase one small carriage, and ex-ministers took their turn to act as footmen, when they rode out to see the country. The little party was soon scattered. In the summer of 1793, Madame de Staël rejoined her father in Switzerland. At Coppet she devoted her great energy to the succour of exiles, and the reconciliation of France and England.