When the terrible Danton exclaimed, “The kings of Europe menace us; it behooves us to defy them; let us throw down to them the head of a king as our gage!” these detestable words, followed by so cruel a result, formed, however, a formidable stroke of policy.  But the Queen!  What urgent reasons of state could Danton, Collot d’Herbois, and Robespierre allege against her?  What savage greatness did they discover in stirring up a whole nation to avenge their quarrel on a woman?  What remained of her former power?  She was a captive, a widow, trembling for her children!  In those judges, who at once outraged modesty and nature; in that people whose vilest scoffs pursued her to the scaffold, who could have recognised the generous people of France?  Of all the crimes which disgraced the Revolution, none was more calculated to show how the spirit of party can degrade the character of a nation.

The news of this dreadful event reached Madame Campan in an obscure retreat which she had chosen.  She had not succeeded in her endeavours to share the Queen’s captivity, and she expected every moment a similar fate.  After escaping, almost miraculously, from the murderous fury of the Marseillais; after being denounced and pursued by Robespierre, and entrusted, through the confidence of the King and Queen, with papers of the utmost importance, Madame Campan went to Coubertin, in the valley of Chevreuse.  Madame Auguid, her sister, had just committed suicide, at the very moment of her arrest.

[Maternal affection prevailed over her religious sentiments; she wished to preserve the wreck of her fortune for her children.  Had she deferred this fatal act for one day she would have been saved; the cart which conveyed Robespierre to execution stopped her funeral procession!]

The scaffold awaited Madame Campan, when the 9th of Thermidor restored her to life; but did not restore to her the most constant object of her thoughts, her zeal, and her devotion.

A new career now opened to Madame Campan.  At Coubertin, surrounded by her nieces, she was fond of directing their studies.  This occupation caused her ideas to revert to the subject of education, and awakened once more the inclinations of her youth.  At the age of twelve years she could never meet a school of young ladies passing through the streets without feeling ambitious of the situation and authority of their mistress.  Her abode at Court had diverted but not altered her inclinations.  “A month after the fall of Robespierre,” she says, “I considered as to the means of providing for myself, for a mother seventy years of age, my sick husband, my child nine years old, and part of my ruined family.  I now possessed nothing in the world but an assignat of five hundred francs.  I had become responsible for my husband’s debts, to the amount of thirty thousand francs.  I chose St. Germain to set up a boarding-school, for that town did not remind me, as Versailles did, both of happy times and of