ONE:Neither had she the anxiety and care for others which made heroes and heroines of so many in those awful times. She had no children, and the only person belonging to herher fatherhad emigrated. She was simply a girl of eighteen suddenly snatched from a life of luxury and enjoyment, and shrinking with terror from the horrors around and the fate before her. Amongst her fellow-prisoners was Andr Chnier, the republican poet, who was soon to suffer death at the hands of those in whom his fantastic dreams had seen the regenerators of mankind. He expressed his love and admiration for her in a poem called La jeune Captive, of which the following are the first lines:
TWO:The child died at five oclock one morning. At the same hour, she writes, of the same day, I was alone with my nurse, and, raising my eyes to the canopy of my bed, I distinctly saw my son in the form of an angel ... holding out his arms to me. This vision, without exciting any suspicions, caused me great surprise. I rubbed my eyes several times, but always saw the same figure. My mother and M. de Genlis came at about eleven; they were overcome with grief, but I was not surprised, for I [391] knew I was ill enough to make them very anxious. I could not help looking always at the canopy of my bed with a sort of shudder, and my mother, knowing that I was afraid of spiders, asked if I saw one ... at last I said I would not tell them what I saw lest they should think my brain was deranged, but they pressed me until I told them.Just after the September massacres Mme. de Genlis received a letter from the Duc dOrlans desiring her to bring his daughter back to France at once, to which she replied that she should do nothing of the sort, and that it would be absurd to choose such a time for entering France.
Duis bibendum diam non erat facilaisis tincidunt. Fusce leo
neque, lacinia at tempor vitae, porta at arcu. Vestibulum
varius non dui at pulvinar. Ut egestas orci in quam
sollicitudin aliquet.
