It was in the midst of all these perplexities, that a friend of twenty years standing, M. Mathieu de Montmorency proposed to come and see me, as he had already done several times since my exile.  It is true that I was written to from Paris, that the Emperor had expressed his displeasure against everyone who should go to Coppet, and especially against M. de Montmorency, if he again went there.  But I confess I made light of these expressions of the Emperor, which he throws out sometimes to terrify people, and struggled very feebly with M. de Montmorency, who generously sought to tranquillize me by his letters.  I was wrong, no doubt; but who could have persuaded themselves that an old friend of a banished woman would have it charged to him as a crime, his going to spend a few days with her.  The life of M. de Montmorency, entirely consecrated to works of piety, or to family affections, estranged him so completely from all politics, that unless it would even go the length of banishing the saints, it seemed to me impossible that the government would attack such a man.  I asked myself likewise, cui bono; a question I have always put to myself whenever any action of Napoleon was in discussion.  I know that he will, without hesitation, do all the evil which can be of use to him for the least thing; but I do not always conjecture the lengths to which his prodigious egotism extends in all directions, towards the infinitely little, as well as the infinitely great.

Although the prefect had made me be told that he recommended me not to travel in Switzerland, I paid no attention to an advice which could not be made a formal order.  I went to meet M. de Montmorency at Orbd, and from thence I proposed to him, as the object of a promenade in Switzerland, to return by way of Fribourg, to see the establishment of female Trappists, at a short distance front that of the men in Val-Sainte.

We reached the convent in the midst of a severe shower, after having been obliged to come nearly a mile on foot.  As we were flattering ourselves with being admitted, the Procureur of la Trappe, who has the direction of the female convent, told us that nobody could be received there.  I tried, however, to ring the bell at the gate of the cloister; a nun appeared behind the latticed opening through which the portress may speak to strangers.

“What do you want?” said she to me, in a voice without modulation as we might suppose that of a ghost.  “I should wish to see the interior of your convent.”—­“That is impossible.”—­“But I am very wet, and want to dry myself.”—­She immediately touched a spring which opened the door of an outer apartment, in which I was allowed to rest myself; but no living creature appeared.  I had hardly been seated a few minutes, when becoming impatient at being unable to penetrate into the interior of the house, I rung again; the same person again appeared, and I asked her if no females were ever admitted into the convent; she answered that it was only in cases