Ever since her journey to Berlin, which had been so cruelly interrupted by the death of her father, my mother had regularly continued the study of the German literature and philosophy; but a new residence in Germany was necessary to enable her to complete the picture of that country, which she proposed to present to France.  In the autumn of 1807, she set out for Vienna, and she there once more found, in the society of the Prince de Ligne, of the Princess Lubomirski, &c. &c. that urbanity of manners and ease of conversation, which had such charms in her eyes.  The Austrian government, exhausted by the war, had not then the strength to be an oppressor on its own account, and notwithstanding preserved towards France, an attitude which was not without dignity and independence.  The objects of Napoleon’s hatred might still find an asylum at Vienna; the year she passed in that city, was therefore, the most tranquil one she had enjoyed since the commencement of her exile.

On her return to Switzerland, where she spent two years in writing her reflections upon Germany, she was not long in perceiving the progress which the imperial tyranny was every day making, and the contagious rapidity with which the passion for places, and the fear of disgrace, were spreading.  No doubt several friends, both at Geneva and in France, preserved to her during her misfortunes, a courageous and unshaken fidelity; but, whoever had any connection with the government, or aspired to any employment, began to keep at a distance from her house, and to dissuade timid people from approaching it.  My mother suffered a great deal from all these symptoms of servitude, which she detected with incomparable sagacity; but the more unhappy she was, the more she felt the desire of diverting from the persons who were about her, the miseries of her situation, and of diffusing around her that life and intellectual movement, which solitude seemed to exclude.

Her talent for declamation was the means of amusement which had the greatest influence over herself, at the same time that it varied the pleasures of her society.  It was at this period, and while she was still laboring on her great work on Germany, that she composed and played at Coppet, the greater part of the little pieces which are collected in the 16th volume of her works*, under the title of Dramatic Essays.

* Or the Second Volume of her OEuvres inedites.

Finally, at the beginning of summer, 1810, having finished the three volumes of Germany, she wished to go and superintend the printing of them, at 40 leagues distance from Paris, a distance which was still permitted to her, and where she might hope to see again those of her old friends, whose affections had not bent before the disgrace of the Emperor.