AS I HAVE begun to relate the misfortunes of my family, I will finish the story. Perhaps this episode of our revolution, as recounted by the son of two individuals who performed conspicuous parts in it, will not be found altogether without interest.
My mother having lost all that could attach her to her country, had now no duty to perform but that of saving her life, and watching over the welfare of her child.
Her situation was, in fact, much worse than that of the other French fugitives. Our name, tainted with Liberalism, was as odious to the aristocrats of that period as to the Jacobins. The prejudiced and intolerant partisans of the old regime, could as little forgive my parents for the part they had taken at the commencement of the revolution, as could the Terrorists for the moderation of their republican patriotism.
The Girondists, who were the Doctrinaires of this era, would have defended the cause of my father; but that party was annihilated, or had, at least, disappeared since the triumph of Robespierre.
My mother, therefore, found herself in a more isolated position than most of the Jacobin victims. Having devotedly embraced the opinions of her husband, she had been obliged to renounce the society in which her life had been passed, and she had not sought entrance into any other. The remains of those circles which had constituted the world of that period—the world, that is to say, of the faubourg Saint-Germain —were not propitiated by our misfortunes; and high aristocrats had well nigh come forth from their hiding places to join in the chorus of the Marseillaise, when they heard cried in the streets the condemnation of the traitor Custine.
The moderate reform party—the men whose love of France exists independently of the form of government adopted by the French—this party, which is now a nation, was not then represented in the country. My father died a martyr in the cause of that unborn nation; and my mother, when only twenty-two years old, had to undergo all the fatal consequences of her husband’s virtue—a virtue too lofty to be appreciated by men who could not understand its motives. The energetic moderation of my father was ill understood by his contemporaries, and his wronged memory attached to the person of his wife, and followed her even to the tomb. Identified with a name which, in the midst of a world torn by conflicting passions, represented the principle of impartiality, she was abandoned by all parties. Others had the consolation of mourning over their wrongs in company, my mother could only weep alone!
Soon after the catastrophe which rendered her a widow, she became aware of the necessity of leaving France. This, however, required a passport, which it was very difficult to obtain. By means of money she procured a false one, under the name of a dealer in lace about to visit Belgium. It was arranged that my nurse, Nanette, a faithful servant of our family in Lorraine, and who had brought me to Paris, should proceed with me by way of Alsace to Pyrmont in Westphalia, where we were to meet my mother, and from thence journey together to Berlin, in which city she expected to join her own mother and her brother also. To no other servant but the nurse herself was this plan confided. All preliminary arrangements having been made, Nanette departed with me for the office of the Strasburg diligence, leaving my mother, who was to set out immediately after us on her journey to Flanders, at her lodging in the Rue de Bourbon. She was employing the last minutes that were to precede her departure, in her room, assorting papers and burning such as might compromise others; for among these papers were letters from officers in the army, and from parties already suspected of being aristocrats, of a character that would have sufficed to bring to the guillotine, in four and twenty hours, herself and fifty other individuals.
Seated on a large sofa near to the fireplace, she was busy burning the most dangerous letters, and placing others, which, as having been written by her parents and dearest friends she felt unwilling to destroy, in a separate box, when suddenly she heard the door of the outer apartment open, and forewarned by one of those presentiments which had never failed to aid her in moments of danger, she said within herself, “I am betrayed; they are coming to arrest me”; whereupon, without further deliberation, for it was too late to burn the heaps of dangerous documents by which she was surrounded, she gathered them hastily together and stuffed them, with the box also, under the sofa, the hangings of which fortunately reached to the floor.
This accomplished, she arose, and received, with an air of perfect composure, the persons who instantly after entered her room. They were the members of the Committee of General Safety, with their attendants. These beings, whose external appearance was at once ridiculous and terrible, surrounded her with muskets and drawn swords.
“You are under arrest,” said the president.
My mother made no answer.
“You are arrested, for intent to emigrate.”
“It was my intention,” she replied, on seeing her false passport already in the hands of the president; for it had been taken from her pocket by the agent of the municipality, whose first care was to search her person.
At this moment my mother observed that her servants had followed the members of the committee into the room. A single glance sufficed to show her by whom she had been denounced; the face of her femme de chambre betrayed the secret of a troubled conscience.
“I pity you,” said my mother, addressing this person, who began to cry and to ask for pardon, pleading that she had acted through fear for herself.
“Had you watched me better,” replied her mistress, “you would have found that I did not expose you to any risk.”
“To which prison will you be conducted?” asked one of the members of the committee; “you are free to choose.”
“I have no choice.”
Before departing they examined the drawers, cabinets, and each piece of furniture in the room, and searched everywhere except beneath the sofa. The papers remained where they had been placed. My mother was conveyed to the Carmelite convent, which had been converted into a prison, and on whose walls was still to be seen the blood of the victims of the 2d September, 1792.
Meanwhile the friend who waited for her at the barrier, convinced from her non-appearance that she had been arrested, hurried to the office of the diligence to prevent Nanette from proceeding with me to Strasburg. He arrived in time, and I was taken back to our residence. My mother was no longer there; the seals had already been affixed upon the doors of her apartments; all the servants had been dismissed; not, however, before they had found time to plunder the plate and linen. The house was robbed of all its valuables, and deserted, except by the civic guard, who kept the door. The kitchen was the only room left to us. Here my poor nurse made her bed close to my cradle, and tended me for eight months with the affection of a mother; and with a devotion that could not have been exceeded had I been a great nobleman.
After the money, which had been destined for our journey, was expended, she supported me by selling, one by one, the articles of her dress. If my mother perished, her intention was to carry me to her own country, and to bring me up among the little peasants of her family. I was at that time two years old. Falling dangerously ill of a malignant fever, she found means to procure for me the attendance of three of the first medical men in Paris. Poor Nanette! she had, indeed, both a generous heart and an energetic character, though the strength of her feelings may not have been equaled by the powers of her intellect.
Her fearlessness made her often very imprudent. During the trial of my grandfather, the people in the streets would often inveigh, in the most violent language, against the traitor Custine. Whenever my nurse chanced to hear these imprecations she would stop in the middle of the crowd, demand who dared to say anything against General Custine, defend him against the accusations of the populace, maintaining that she, who was born his servant, knew him better than they, and conclude by heaping both on them and their revolution the most contemptuous epithets. More than once has she thus incurred danger of being killed in the streets of Paris.
On one occasion, passing with me in her arms across the Place du Carrousel, she observed the women on their knees paying their orisons before the revolutionary shrine of Marat, the martyr of atheism and inhumanity.
By a confusion of ideas, which strikingly exhibits the disorder into which minds were plunged at this epoch, the women, after finishing their prayers, rose, paying a deep reverence to their new saint, and making the sign of the cross.
Nanette was so indignant at this exhibition, that, forgetting I was in her arms, she began to load these new devotees with abuse, and from words soon came to blows. During the struggle she continued faithfully to hold me to her bosom, the fear of my suffering in the contest being her chief care. At length she fell, and the cry of “to the lantern with the aristocrat” resounded from all sides. A woman snatched me from her arms, and she was being dragged along by the hair of her head, when a man, who appeared among the most furious of the crowd, pressed near to her, and contrived to hint in her ear that she should counterfeit insanity, and that he would take care of her child. Nanette began immediately to sing and make many strange grimaces; whereupon her friendly adviser called out “she is mad.”—“She is mad; she is mad; let her go,” was re-echoed by other voices. Availing herself of this means of escape, she retreated, singing and dancing, towards the Pont Royal, and in the Rue du Bac received me again from the hands of her deliverer.
This lesson served to render Nanette (chiefly through fear for me) more circumspect, but her imprudence became a source of constant alarm to my mother.
The latter, in her prison, derived some consolation from the society of several distinguished female fellow-prisoners, who evinced for her the sincerest sympathy. Among others were Mademoiselle Picot, and Mesdames de Lameth, d’Aiguillon, and de Beauharnais, afterwards the Empress Josephine. This last named lady was placed in the same room with my mother, and they mutually performed for each other the offices of a femme de chambre.
With the exception of Madame de Beauharnais, these young and beautiful women took a pride in maintaining a high degree of courage and fortitude. The former exhibited all the thoughtlessness of the creole, and often betrayed a pusillanimity and peevish restlessness that made her companions in misfortune blush. But though she had no magnanimity of character, she was naturally graceful; and gracefulness can dispense with every other qualification. Her mien, her manner, and, above all, her way of speaking, possessed a peculiar charm.
Many curious details connected with the prison life of this period have been written. Had my mother left any memoirs, they would have revealed to the public traits and occurrences still unknown. In the ancient Carmelite convent, among other female prisoners, was an Englishwoman, very old, deaf, and almost blind. She had never been able to learn the reason of her imprisonment; to ascertain which she constantly addressed everyone with whom she had an opportunity of speaking. The executioner was the last person who replied to her inquiry.
In the same chamber with this last was the wife of a man who exhibited a puppet show. They had been arrested, they said, because their puppets were too aristocratic. The woman had a profound respect for the fallen great; and, thanks to this feeling! the prisoners of noble birth received from her a homage greater than they had ever met with in their own houses.
The plebeian voluntarily waited upon them, and was continually performing little obliging offices, actuated by the pure pleasure of the service: she never approached their persons without testifying marks of the most profound respect; and in finally bidding farewell to these illustrious companions, to proceed with her husband to the place of execution, the poor woman did not for a moment forget to use all those antiquated forms of obeisance with which she was accustomed to address them at other times.
The prisoners, both male and female, used to meet at certain hours in a kind of garden, where the men played at prisoners’ bars. It was usually during these moments of recreation that the revolutionary tribunal sent to summon its victims. If the one singled out was in the midst of a game, he bade a simple adieu to his friends, after which the party continued their play!! This prison was a world in miniature, of which Robespierre was the god. What could so much resemble hell, as this caricature of Providence?
After having been five months in prison, my mother sawM. de Beauharnais depart for the scaffold. In passing her, he presented her with an arabesque talisman set in a ring. She always kept it, and it is now worn by me.
Time was then no longer reckoned by weeks, but by periods of ten days; the tenth was termed décadi, and answered to our Sunday, as they neither worked nor guillotined on that day. Its arrival, therefore, assured to the prisoners an existence of twenty-four hours; this appeared an age in prospect, and the day was always viewed as a fête in the prison.
Such was the life of my mother after the death of her husband. It continued during the last six months of the Reign of Terror. Considering her connections, her celebrity, and the circumstances of her arrest, it was wonderful that she had escaped the scaffold so long. On three different occasions she was taken from prison to her own house, where her inquisitors examined before her, and questioned her upon every insignificant paper which they could find in the drawers and secretaries; searching every corner of the apartment, and omitting only to examine the sofa, which it was the will of God should be overlooked. It may be readily imagined that my mother’s heart would irrepressibly beat every time they approached this spot. She has often told me that she did not dare, in one single instance, to look towards the fatal sofa, and yet that she equally feared her eyes might have the appearance of being too consciously averted.
This was not the only token of protection which God vouchsafed her in her misfortunes. The sentiments of the men on whom her fate depended were softened by an invisible power.
Twelve members of the section superintended the searches. They invariably concluded by subjecting the prisoner to a long and scrutinizing inquiry. The first time she was thus questioned, the president of this species of revolutionary jury was a little hunchbacked shoemaker, who was as malicious as he was ugly. This man had found in a corner, a shoe, which he pretended was made of English leather. The accusation was serious. My mother at first maintained that the leather was not English, but the shoe-making president insisted on the fact.
“It is possible that it may be,” my mother at length conceded; “you ought to know better than I. All that I can say is, that I have never procured anything from England.”
They tried it on her foot: it fitted her. “Who is your shoemaker?” demanded the president. She named him. He had been the fashionable shoemaker at the commencement of the revolution.
“A bad patriot,” observed the jealous humpback.
“A good shoemaker!” remarked my mother.
“We would imprison him,” replied the president, “but the aristocrat has concealed himself. Do you know where he is?”
My mother answered in the negative, and intimated that if she did she would not tell.
Her courageous answers, which contrasted strangely with her timid mien; the species of involuntary irony to which these scenes, alike burlesque and tragic in their character, excited her; the exquisite beauty of her person; her youth; her widow’s dress; the expression of her face, at once wayward and resigned; her air, lofty in spite of herself; her perfectly easy and elegant manners; her celebrity, already national; the dignity of misfortune; the unequaled accent of her silver voice; and, finally, the instinct of the woman, that constant desire to please, which always succeeds when it is innate and consequently natural,—all contributed to win the hearts of her judges, hard and cruel as they were; in short, all felt favorably disposed towards her except the little hunchback.
My mother had a remarkable talent for drawing, especially for taking likenesses. In the intervals of her examination she amused herself by taking those of the persons who surrounded her, and in a few minutes had made an excellent sketch of the terrible picture in which she was the chief figure.
A master mason, of the name of Jérôme, one of the most ardent Jacobins of the day, was present on this occasion. He took the sketch from my mother and passed it to the others; each recognized himself, and all amused themselves at the expense of the president. The rage of the latter might have been fatal to my mother; nevertheless, it was the imprudence she on this occasion committed which saved her life.
The drawing was attached to the other documents connected with her case. Jérôme, the mason, who affected the most violent hostility to her, and who never addressed her without some horrible oath, Jérôme, ferocious though he might be, was young; and, struck with admiration of her many charms, he conceived the idea of saving her from the guillotine.
He had free access to the office of Fouquier-Tinville, the chief prosecutor, where lay the box of papers on which were inscribed the names of every prisoner in Paris. These papers were used to furnish the executions of the day, which often reached to the number of sixty or eighty, and the spectacle of which constituted the chief amusement of the people of Paris. The selection of the victims was generally made with little choice, the names that were uppermost being first taken. Jérôme was acquainted with the fatal box: during six months he did not once fail to enter the office every evening, and, unobserved, to place the paper on which was inscribed the name of my mother at the bottom of the box, or, at least, to assure himself that it remained there. When fresh papers were put in, they were, by a species of distributive justice, placed undermost, so that each name should come in its turn. It was the business of Jérôme constantly to search out my mother’s, and restore it to the bottom place.
I am now only repeating what I have myself often heard Jérôme relate. He has told me that, at night, when everyone had retired, he has often returned to the office, under the fear that someone might at the last moment have disturbed the order of the papers—that order on which the life of my mother entirely depended. In fact on one occasion her name appeared at the top of the pile; Jérôme shuddered, and again placed it under the others.
Neither I nor the friends who listened to this fearful recital dared to ask Jérôme the names of the victims whose death he had hastened in my mother’s favor. The latter knew nothing, until after her deliverance from prison, of the stratagem that had saved her life.
When the day of the 9th Thermidor arrived, the prisons were found to be almost emptied; there remained only three sheets in the box of Fouquier-Tinville, and it was not likely that many would be added; the bloody spectacles of the Place de la Révolution began to weary the public; and the project of Robespierre and his confidential counselors was to make an end of the families of the old regime, by commanding a general massacre in the interior of the prisons.
My mother, who contemplated death on the scaffold with such high resolution, has often told me that she felt her courage sink at the idea of being murdered in this manner.
During the last weeks of the Reign of Terror, the old keepers of the Carmelite prison had been replaced by the more ferocious men who were destined to aid in effecting the secret executions. They did not conceal from their victims the plan formed against them; the rules of the prison were made more severe; visitors were no longer admitted; every distant sound the prisoners caught seemed to them the signal of carnage; every night appeared to them the last.
This agony of suspense was relieved the very day that Robespierre fell.
Some who have dealt in over-refined subtleties, in reviewing the history of the Reign of Terror, pretend that Robes-pierre only fell because he was better than his opponents.
It is true that his accomplices did not become his enemies, until they trembled for their own lives; but in saving themselves they saved France, which would have become a den of wild beasts had Robespierre’s plans been carried out. The revolution of the 9th Thermidor was, it is also true, the revolt of a banditti; but surely the fact of their captain having fallen a victim to their conspiracy, does not render him any the worthier character. If misfortune served to justify crime, what would become of the principle of conscience? Equity would perish under the influence of a false generosity—a most dangerous sentiment, for it seduces noble minds, and causes them to forget that a good man should prefer justice and truth to every other consideration.
It has been said that Robespierre was not naturally cruel. What of that? He was one in whom envy had become omnipotent. Envy, nursed and fed by the well-merited humiliations that this man had endured, under the state of society which preceded the revolution, had suggested to him the idea of a revenge so atrocious, that the meanness of his soul and the hardness of his heart scarcely suffice to persuade us that he was capable of realizing it. To write in blood, to calculate by heads, such were the processes of political arithmetic to which France submitted under the government of Robes-pierre. She does yet worse in the present day—she listens to those who would justify him.
To accept as an excuse for murder, that which renders it the more odious, the sangfroid and the ulterior plans of the murderer, is to contribute to one of the most crying evils of our age, the perversion of human judgment. The men of the present day, in the decisions dictated by their false sensibility, proceed with an impartiality that annihilates the principles of good and evil; to arrange matters upon earth to their own liking, they have abolished, at one blow, heaven and hell.
Such are the sophisms to which the pretended amelioration of our manners leads—an amelioration which is nothing more than a supreme moral indifference, a deeply rooted religious incredulity, and an ever-increasing avidity for sensual gratifications; but patience,—the world has ere now recovered from a yet more hopeless state.
Two days after the 9th Thermidor, the greater number of the prisons of Paris were empty. Madame de Beauharnais, through her connection with Tallien, came out in triumph; Mesdames d’Aiguillon and de Lameth were also speedily liberated. My mother was almost the only one left in the Carmelite prison. She beheld her noble companions in misfortune give place to the Terrorists, who, after the political revolution that had been effected, daily changed places with their victims. All the friends and relatives of my mother were dispersed; no one thought of her. Jérôme, proscribed, in turn, as a friend of Robespierre, was obliged to conceal himself and could not aid her.
For two months she remained thus abandoned, under a desolation of feeling, that, she has often told me, was more difficult to endure than the previous more immediate sense of peril.
The struggle of parties continued; the government was still in danger of falling again into the hands of the Jacobins. But for the courage of Boissy-d’Anglas, the murder of Feraud had become the signal for a second Reign of Terror, more terrible than the first. My mother knew all this; my illness also, though she did not know its extent, added to her griefs.
At length Nanette, having saved my life by her careful nursing, set seriously about rescuing that of her mistress. She went to the house of one Dyle, a manufacturer of china, in order to consult with about fifty workmen of our province, who were then employed by this rich individual, and who had formerly worked at a porcelain manufactory founded by my grandfather at Niderviller, at the foot of the Vosges, and subsequently confiscated with his other property.
It was to these men, among whom was Malriat her father, that Nanette applied, urging them to interest themselves in the fate of their former mistress.
They eagerly signed a petition, framed by Nanette, who both spoke and wrote the German-French of Lorraine. This document she herself carried to Legendre, formerly a butcher, and then president of the bureau to which petitions in favor of prisoners were addressed. The paper of Nanette was received and thrown aside, among a multitude of similar petitions.
One evening, three young persons, connected with Legendre, entered the bureau, rather heated with wine, and amused themselves with chasing each other over the tables, and with other similar pranks. In the midst of this sport, some of the surrounding papers were disturbed; one fell, and was picked up by a member of the party. “What have you there?” asked the others.
“No doubt a petition,” replied Rossigneux, which was the name of the person addressed.
“Yes; but for what prisoner?”
They called for lights. In the interval of their appearing, the three hot-headed youths took an oath among themselves to obtain, that very evening from Legendre, the signature that would give liberty to the captive, whoever he might be, and to announce to him his freedom within the same hour.
“I swear it, though it should be the liberation of the Prince de Condé,” said Rossigneux.
“No doubt,” said the others, laughing; “he is no longer a prisoner.”
They read the petition; it was that dictated by Nanette, and signed by the workmen of Niderviller.
“How fortunate,” shouted the young men; “the lovely Custine, a second Roland! We will go and fetch her from prison in a body.”
Legendre returned home at one o’clock in the morning, under the influence of wine like the others. The petition for my mother’s liberty was presented by three giddy youths, signed by a drunken man, and at three o’clock in the morning, the former, empowered to open her prison gates, knocked at the door of her apartment.
She at that time slept alone; and would neither open her door, nor consent to leave the prison.
Her liberators explained to her as well as they could, the circumstances of their coming; but she resisted all their urgent entreaties; she feared to enter a hackney coach with strangers in the middle of the night; and all they could obtain from her was the permission to return at the hour of ten.
When she finally left the prison, they related to her, with many details, the circumstances to which the liberation was owing, more especially with the view of proving to her that she had nobody to thank for it; for at that time a species of traffic in liberty was carried on by certain intriguers, who would often extort largely from the liberated parties, for the most part already ruined by the revolution.
A lady of rank, and nearly related to my mother, was not ashamed to ask her for thirty thousand francs, which she 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.
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 five 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.
“On what does my lady imagine she has lived, since she left the prison?” asked Nanette, one day.
“I do not know; you must have sold the plate, the linen, or the jewels.”
“There were none left to sell.”
“Well then, on what?”
“On money which Jérôme 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 see you 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. He had the utmost confidence in her, and used often to relate to her his domestic troubles, but never spoke on politics or religion. He 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 government 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 this 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 were 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 us 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 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.
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 Elzéar 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 through 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 center of a circle of distinguished persons, among whom were some of the first men of our country. M. de Chateaubriand continued her friend to the last.
For painting she had almost the talent of an artist, and never passed a day without shutting herself up in her studio for several hours. The world she loved not—it frightened, wearied, and disgusted her; she had seen it, in its depths, too early; nevertheless, she was born with, and had ever preserved, that generosity which is the virtue of more prosperous lives.
Her timidity in society was proverbial among her family; her brother used to observe that she had more fear of a salon than of the scaffold.
During the whole period of the empire, she and her friends sided with the opposition. After the death of the Duc d’Enghien, she never visited Malmaison, nor did she ever again see Madame Bonaparte.
In 1811 she made, with me, the tour of Switzerland and Italy. On this occasion she accompanied me everywhere, and, either on horseback or on foot, crossed the most dangerous passages of the Alps.
We passed the winter at Rome, in a most agreeable society. My mother was no longer young; yet the classic grace of her features made a strong impression on Canova, whose ingenuous character she much admired. One day I said to her, “With your romantic mind, I should not wonder at your marrying Canova.”
“Do not dare me to do it,” she replied. “If he were not Marquis d’Ischia, I might be tempted.”
I had the happiness of having her life preserved to me until the 13th of July, 1826. She died of the same disease that proved fatal to Bonaparte. This malady, of which the germ had long existed, was accelerated by grief, caused by the death of my wife and only child.
It was in honor of my mother that Madame de Staël, who knew her well and loved her warmly, gave the name of Delphine to the heroine of her first romance.
At the age of fifty-six years she still retained a beauty that struck even those who had not known her in her youth, and were not, therefore, seduced by the charms of memory.