There is at three leagues from Bex, a famous cascade, where the water falls from a very lofty mountain.  I proposed to my friends to go and see it, and we returned before dinner.  It is true that this cascade was upon the territory of the Valais, consequently then upon the French territory, and I forgot that I was not allowed more of that than the small space of ground which separates Coppet from Geneva.  When I returned home, the prefect not only blamed me for having presumed to travel in Switzerland, but made it the greatest proof of his indulgence to keep silence on the crime I had committed, in setting my foot on the territory of the French empire.  I might have said, in the words of Lafontaine’s fable: 

Je tondu de ce pre la largeur de ma langue

(I grazed of this meadow the breadth of my tongue.) But I confessed with great simplicity the fault I had committed in going to see this Swiss cascade, without dreaming that it was in France.

CHAPTER 4.

Exile of M. de Montmorency and Madame Recamier—­New persecutions.

This continual chicanery upon my most trifling actions, rendered my life odious to me, and I could not divert myself by occupation; for the recollection of the fate of my last work, and the certainty of never being able to publish any thing in future, operated as a complete damper to my mind, which requires emulation to be capable of labor.  Notwithstanding, I could not yet resolve to quit for ever the borders of France, the abode of my father, and the friends who remained faithful to me.  Every day I thought of departing, and every day I found in my own mind some reason for remaining, until the last blow was aimed at my soul; God knows what I have suffered from it.

M. de Montmorency came to pass several days with me at Coppet, and the wickedness of detail in the master of so great an empire is so well calculated, that by the return of the courier who announced his arrival at Coppet, my friend received his letter of exile.  The emperor would not have been satisfied if this order had not been signified to him at my house, and if there had not been in the letter itself of the minister of police, a word to signify that I was the cause of this exile.  M. de Montmorency endeavoured, in every possible way, to soften the news to me, but, I tell it to Bonaparte, that he may applaud himself on the success of his scheme, I shrieked with agony on learning the calamity which I had drawn on the head of my generous friend; and never was my heart, tried as it had been for so many years, nearer to despair.  I knew not how to lull the rending thoughts which succeeded each other in my bosom, and had recourse to opium to suspend for some hours the anguish which I felt.  M. do Montmorency, calm and religious, invited me to follow his example; the consciousness of the devotedness to me which he had condescended to show, supported him:  but for me, I reproached myself for the bitter consequences of this devotedness, which now separated him from his family and friends.  I prayed to the Almighty without ceasing, but grief would not quit its hold of me for a moment, and life became a burden to me.