pretended had been expended in bribes to procure her release. My mother replied by simply relating the story of Rossigneux, and saw her relative no more.
NOBLE CONDUCT OF JEROME.43
What a scene had she to encounter on returning to her own residence ! The house bare and desolate, the seals yet on the doors, and I in the kitchen, still deaf and imbecile, in consequence of the malady that had so nearly ended in my death. My mother had remained firm before the terror of the scaffold, but she sank under this misery. The day after her return she was attacked with jaundice, which lasted fiye months, and left an affection of the liver, from which she suffered throughout her life.
At the end of six months, the small part of the estate of her husband that had remained unsold, was restored to her. We were then both recovered.
' I do not know; you must have sold the plate, the linen, or the jewels.'
' Well then, on what ? '
' On money which Jerome forwarded to me every week, with the express command that I was not to mention it to my lady ; but now that she can return it, I will tell her the real fact.'
My mother had the gratification of saving the life of this man, when proscribed with the terrorists. She concealed him, and aided his escape to America.
He returned under the consulate, with a little fortune which he had made in the United States, and which he afterwards augmented by speculations in Paris. My mother treated him as a friend, and her family loaded him with marks of grateful kindness ; yet he would never form one of our society. He used to say to my mother, ' I will come and sec you
44 DIFFICULTIES OF MADAME DE CUSTINE.
when you are alone, you will always receive me with kindness, for I know your heart; but your friends will regard me as some strange animal; I shall not be at my ease with them. I was not born as you were; I cannot speak as you do.' My mother always continued a faithful friend to him. lie had the utmost confidence in her, and used often to relate to her his domestic troubles, but never spoke on politics or religion. lie died while I was yet a child, about the commencement of the period of the Empire.
My poor mother passed in struggling with poverty the best years of that life which had been so miraculously preserved.
Of the enormously rich estate of my grandfather, nothing remained to us but the debts. The govern-inent took the property, but left the task of paying the creditors to those whom it had robbed of the means for so doing.
Twenty years were spent in ruinous lawsuits, with the view of recovering for me some of tliis estate. My mother was my guardian. Her love for me prevented her ever again marrying; besides, made a widow by the hands of the executioner, she did not feel herself free to act as do other women.
Our involved and complicated affairs wrere her torment. We were ever kept suspended betwixt fear and hope, and struggling meanwhile with want. At one time riches would appear within our grasp; at another, some unforeseen reverse, some chicanery of the law, deprived lis of every prospect. If I have any taste for the elegancies of life, I attribute it to the privations of my early youth.
A year after her liberation, my mother obtained
BALLAD OF LE ROSIER.
45
a passport to proceed to Switzerland. Here her mother and her brother, who did not dare to enter France, awaited her.
Their meeting, notwithstanding the renewal of griefs which it called forth, was a consolation.
Madame de Sabran had, at one time, ceased to hope that she should ever again see her daughter. This meeting was therefore the realisation of the charming ballad of Le Rosier, which had then become celebrated throughout Europe.
My grandmother being unable, as an emigre, to write letters to her daughter during the reign of terror, contrived to have conveyed to her in prison, these beautiful and touching verses.
Am or J. Jacques. —
i. Est bien a moi, car l'ai fait naitre, Ce beau rosier, plaisirs trop courts ! II a fallu fuir et peut-etre Plus ne le verrai de mes jours.
п. Beau rosier cede a la tempete : Faiblesse desarme fureurs, Sous les autans com`be ta tete, 0u bien e'en est fait de tes ileurs.
ni. Bien que me fit, mal que me cause En ton penser s'offrent a moi; Aupres de toi n'ai vu que roses, Ne sens qu'epines loin de toi.
Etais ma joie, etais ma gloire, Et mes plaisirs et mon bonheur ; Ne periras dans ma memoire : Та racine tient a mon c?ur !!
46
LAVATEII.
v.
Rosier prends so?ii de ton feuillage, So?s tonjours beau, so?s toujours vert, Ann ({lie voye apres l'orage Tes fleurs egayer шоп liiver.
The wish was accomplished, the rose bush had reflourished, and the united children were again pressed to the bosom of their tender mother.
This Swiss journey was one of the happiest portions of my mother's life; my grandmother was one of the most distinguished and amiable women of her time; and my uncle, the Count Elzear de Sabran, though younger than his sister, possessed superior and precocious powers of mind.
Lavater was a friend of Madame de Sabran's, who took her daughter to Zurich purposely to present her to this oracle of the philosophy of that day. The great physiognomist, on perceiving her, turned towards Madame de Sabran, observing ,'Ah, madame, what a fortunate mother you are ! your daughter is transparent! Never have I seen so much sincerity; I can read tln`ough her face ! '
After her return to France, she devoted herself to two objects, namely, the re-establishment of my fortune, and the direction of my education. I owe to her all that I am, and all that I have. She became also the eentre of a
