He had hounded on the
peasants until my family had been compelled to fly from the country, and
had afterwards aided Robespierre in his worst excesses, receiving as a
reward the castle and estate of Grosbois, which was our own. At the
fall of Robespierre he had succeeded in conciliating Barras, and through
every successive change he still managed to gain a fresh tenure of the
property. Now it appeared from his letter that the new Emperor of
France had also taken his part, though why he should befriend a man with
such a history, and what service my Republican uncle could possibly
render to him, were matters upon which I could form no opinion.
And now you will ask me, no doubt, why I should accept the invitation
of such a man--a man whom my father had always stigmatised as a usurper
and a traitor. It is easier to speak of it now than then, but the fact
was that we of the new generation felt it very irksome and difficult to
carry on the bitter quarrels of the last. To the older _emigres_ the
clock of time seemed to have stopped in the year 1792, and they remained
for ever with the loves and the hatreds of that era fixed indelibly upon
their souls.
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