‘It would have been wiser,’ said Beaumont, ’but it would have been more merciful, and therefore it was not done.  But you talk of all these men as solitarily imprisoned.  Some of them had companions.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ’but they complained that one permanent companion was worse than solitude.  Gonfalonieri said, that one could not be in the same room, with the same man, a year without hating him.

’One of the Neapolitan prisoners was chained for some time to a brigand.  Afterwards the brigand was replaced by a gentleman.  He complained bitterly of the change.

‘The brigand,’ said Minnie, ’was his slave, the gentleman had a will of his own.’

’How did M. de La Fayette,’[2] I asked Madame de Beaumont, ’bear his five years’ imprisonment at Olmutz?’

‘His health,’ said Madame de Beaumont, ’was good, but the miseries of his country and the sufferings of his wife made him very unhappy.  When my grandmother came to him, it was two days before she had strength to tell him that all his and her family had perished.  I was once at Olmutz, and saw the one room which they had inhabited.  It was damp and dark.  She asked to be allowed to leave it for a time for better medical treatment and change of air.  It was granted only on the condition that she should never return.  She refused.  The rheumatic attacks which the state of the prison had produced, continued and increased:  she was hopelessly ill when they were released—­and died soon afterwards.  The sense of wrong aggravated their sufferings, for their imprisonment was a gross and wanton violation of all law, international and municipal.  My grandfather was not an Austrian subject; he had committed no offence against Austria.  She seized him simply because he was a liberal, because his principles had made him the enemy of tyranny in America and in France; and because his birth and talents and reputation gave him influence.  It was one of the brutal stupid acts of individual cruelty which characterise the Austrian despotism, and have done more to ruin it than a wider oppression—­such a one, for instance, as ours, more mischievous, but more intelligent,—­would have done.’

‘Freedom,’ said Ampere, ’was offered to him on the mere condition of his not serving in the French army.  At that time the Jacobins would have guillotined him, the Royalists would have forced duel after duel on him till they had killed him.  It seemed impossible that he should ever be able to draw his sword for France.  In fact he never was able.  America offered him an asylum, honours, land, everything that could console an exile.  But he refused to give up the chance, remote as it was, of being useful to his country, and remained a prisoner till he was delivered by Napoleon.’

‘He firmly believed,’ said Madame de Beaumont, ’that if the Royal Family would have taken refuge with his army in 1791 he could have saved them, and probably the Monarchy.  His army was then in his hands, a few months after the Jacobins had corrupted it.’