Was it right to punish such a being for the crime which
his arm had committed?
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.
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