The spell of the heart of France: the towns, villages and châteaux about ParisHallays, André
History
The spell of the heart of France: the towns, villages and châteaux about Paris
Hallays, André
France -- Description and travel; France -- History
For three weeks Laréveillière remained hidden in the forest of Emile.
(At this time Montmorency was called Emile, in honor of Rousseau.)
Neither he nor Bosc had a red cent. They had to live on bread, roots
and snails. Besides, their hiding place was not safe; there was nothing
unusual in the presence of Bosc in this solitude, but Laré-veillière
might any day excite the curiosity of the patriots of Emile. The
ugliness of his countenance and the deformity of his figure caused him
to be noticed by every passer-by. Robespierre was then living in the
hermitage of Jean Jacques; it has even been related that he met the
fugitive face to face one day; at all events such an encounter was to be
dreaded. The administrators of Seine-et-Oise sometimes took a fancy to
hunt in the neighborhood of Sainte Radegonde.... The peril increased
from day to day. A faithful friend, Pincepré de Buire, invited
Laréveillère to take refuge at his home near Péronne. He left Sainte
Radegonde.
"The good Mile. Letourneur," he has related, "gave me two or three
handkerchiefs; Rozier, today a counselor at the royal court of
Montpellier, then judge of the district of Montmorency, whose
acquaintance we had made at Mile. Letourneur's, put one of his shirts in
my pocket. Poor Bosc gave me the widow's mite--he put a stick of white
crab in my hand and guided me through the forest to the highway. To
use the English expression, on leaving him I tore myself from him' with
extreme grief." [4]
Laréveillière arrived without difficulty at the village of Buire.
On the same day that he left Sainte Radegonde, another deputy of the
Convention, Masuyer, came to take his place; he was accused because he
had assisted at the escape of Pétion; but his greatest crime was that
he had, in full Assembly, said to Pache, who insisted on proscriptions:
"Haven't you got a little place for me on your list? There would be
a hundred crowns in it for you!" Masuyer, disregarding Bosc's advice,
wished to enter Paris. He was arrested near the Neuilly Bridge. Bosc,
who had insisted on accompanying him, had just time to plunge into
the Bois de Boulogne, escaped, and returned to his hermitage, where he
awaited the end of the Terror.
*****
When he returned to Paris, in the autumn of 1794, Bosc devoted his
entire time to the labors imposed upon him by the last will of Madame
Roland. He withdrew the manuscript of her Memoirs from the hiding place
where he had left it, on top of the beam over the stable door of Sainte
Radegonde, and published the first part of it in April, 1795. At the
same time he endeavored to collect the remnants of the patrimony of
Eudora, whose guardianship he had accepted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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