the misfortunes of France.  I took with me a nun of l’Enfant-Jesus, to give an unquestionable pledge of my religious principles.  The school of St. Germain was the first in which the opening of an oratory was ventured on.  The Directory was displeased at it, and ordered it to be immediately shut up; and some time after commissioners were sent to desire that the reading of the Scriptures should be suppressed in my school.  I inquired what books were to be substituted in their stead.  After some minutes’ conversation, they observed:  ’Citizeness, you are arguing after the old fashion; no reflections.  The nation commands; we must have obedience, and no reasoning.’  Not having the means of printing my prospectus, I wrote a hundred copies of it, and sent them to the persons of my acquaintance who had survived the dreadful commotions.  At the year’s end I had sixty pupils; soon afterwards a hundred.  I bought furniture and paid my debts.”

The rapid success of the establishment at St. Germain was undoubtedly owing to the talents, experience, and excellent principles of Madame Campan, seconded by public opinion.  All property had changed hands; all ranks found themselves confusedly jumbled by the shock of the Revolution:  the grand seigneur dined at the table of the opulent contractor; and the witty and elegant marquise was present at the ball by the side of the clumsy peasant lately grown rich.  In the absence of the ancient distinctions, elegant manners and polished language now formed a kind of aristocracy.  The house of St. Germain, conducted by a lady who possessed the deportment and the habits of the best society, was not only a school of knowledge, but a school of the world.

“A friend of Madame de Beauharnais,” continues Madame Campan, “brought me her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais, and her niece Emilie de Beauharnais.  Six months afterwards she came to inform me of her marriage with a Corsican gentleman, who had been brought up in the military school, and was then a general.  I was requested to communicate this information to her daughter, who long lamented her mother’s change of name.  I was also desired to watch over the education of little Eugene de Beauharnais, who was placed at St. Germain, in the same school with my son.

“A great intimacy sprang up between my nieces and these young people.  Madame de Beauharnaias set out for Italy, and left her children with me.  On her return, after the conquests of Bonaparte, that general, much pleased with the improvement of his stepdaughter, invited me to dine at Malmaison, and attended two representations of ‘Esther’ at my school.”

He also showed his appreciation of her talents by sending his sister Caroline to St. Germain.  Shortly before Caroline’s marriage to Murat, and while she was yet at St. Germain, Napoleon observed to Madame Campan:  “I do not like those love matches between young people whose brains are excited by the flames of the imagination.  I had other views for my sister.  Who knows what high alliance I might have procured for her!  She is thoughtless, and does not form a just notion of my situation.  The time will come when, perhaps, sovereigns might dispute for her hand.  She is about to marry a brave man; but in my situation that is not enough.  Fate should be left to fulfil her decrees.”