“In the first moments after the death of my father the interest excited by his fate, and by the state of his family was universal. The Directory instantly passed a decree by which an immediate aid of 1,200 francs, from the funds of the navy, and three month’s pay from the war department, were assigned to his widow, and she was requested to produce her titles to a regular pension. At the same time, Bruix and Tallyrand (to the latter of whom, whatever character be assigned him in history, we certainly owe gratitude for the lively and disinterested part he took in our fate, on the few but important occasions on which we addressed him) proposed, the first, to take charge of my brother, and the other of me. Kilmaine, who had no children, proposed to adopt us both. But, grateful as my mother felt for those offers, she declined them, determined never to part from her children; and to fulfil, to the last, the solemn engagement under which she considered herself bound, to superintend their education; she did not wish them to be bred as favourites and dependants in great families; and trusted rather to the gratitude of the nation to give them a public, simple and manly education, as an homage to their father’s services. These gentlemen entered into her views; and on their demand, the Directory decreed that the sons of Theobald Wolfe Tone, adopted by the French republic, should be educated at the national expense, in the Prytaneum. “The pensions which the executive had, constitutionally, a power to grant to the widows and families of officers killed on the field of battle, were limited by law according to the rank of these officers, and to the length of time during which they had served. According to this law, the pension to which my mother was entitled, amounted only to 300 francs, or little more than £12 sterling a year. This she refused either to demand or accept. But in special cases the legislature had reserved to itself the right of granting pensions to any amount. Ours was a very special case; but it was necessary to address the council of four hundred on the subject. Official delays intervened; it was difficult to collect at once all the legal proofs required; the business was therefore dropped for the present; and indeed in the varying and shifting movement of that most unstable of governments, no single object, however interesting at first, could fix the public attention for a period of any duration. In a few months three of the directors were expelled by their colleagues, and replaced by others; the affairs of Ireland, Tone and his family, and the fatal indiscretion of Humbert, who now returned from captivity, were all forgotten in the disasters of Italy and Germany, and the victories of Suwarrow and Prince Charles of Austria.