CONCEALING HER PAPEBS.27
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, 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 cabinet, 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 fire-place, she was busy burning the most dangerous letters, and с 2
28MADAME DE CUSTINE ;
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 jiresentiments which had never failed to admonish 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 com¡iosure, the persons who instantly after entered her cabinet. 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 jrøckct 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 äe chamhre betrayed the secret of a troubled conscience.
HER AREEST.29
" I pity yon," 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 every where 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 Xanette 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 с 3
30DEVOTION OF NANETTE.
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 Pans. Poor Nanette ! she had, indeed, both a generous heart and an energetic character, though the strength of her feel-ings may not have been equalled 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 any thing against General Custine, defend him against the accusations of the populace, maintaining that she, who was bona 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 Pans.
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.
SCENE AT MARAT'S TOMB.31
By a confusion of ideas, which strikingly exhibits the disorder into which minds were plunged at this epoch, the women, after finisliing 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 faith-fully to hold me to her bosom, the fear of my suffering in the contest being her chief care. At length she fell, and the ery 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 Вас received me again from the hands of her deliverer.
This lesson served to render Nanette (chiefly through fear for me) more circumspect, but her imprudenee became a source of constant alarm to my mother.