ess, and made
up his mind to flee. 'I am an outlaw,' he said, 'and if I am discovered
you will be dragged to the same death.' 'The Convention,' Madame Vernet
answered, with something of the heroism of more notable women of that
time, 'may put you out of the law; it has not the power to put you out
of humanity. You stay.' This was no speech of the theatre. The whole
household kept the most vigorous watch over the prisoner thus generously
detained, and for many months Madame Vernet's humane firmness was
successful in preventing his escape. This time--his soul grievously
burdened by anxiety as to the fate of his wife and child, and by a
restless eagerness not to compromise his benefactress, a bloody death
staring him every moment in the face--Condorcet spent in the
composition, without the aid of a single book, of his memorable work on
the progress of the human mind. Among the many wonders of an epoch of
portents, this feat of intellectual abstraction is not the least
amazing.

When his task was accomplished, Condorcet felt with more keenness than
ever the deadly peril in which his presence placed Madame Vernet. He was
aware that to leave her house was to seek death, but he did not fear. He
drew up a paper of directions to be given one day to his little
daughter, when she should be of years to understand and follow them.
They are written with minute care, and though tender and solicitous,
they show perfect composure. His daughter is above all things to banish
from her mind every revengeful sentiment against her father's enemies;
to distrust her filial sensibility, and to make this sacrifice for her
father's own sake. This done, he marched downstairs, and having by an
artful stratagem thrown Madame Vernet off her guard, he went out at ten
o'clock in the morning imperfectly disguised into the street. This was
the fifth of April 1794. By three in the afternoon, exhausted by fatigue
which his strict confinement for nine months made excessive, he reached
the house of a friend in the country, and prayed for a night's shelter.
His presence excited less pity than alarm. The people gave him
refreshment, and he borrowed a little pocket copy of Horace, with which
he went forth into the loneliness of the night. He promised himself
shelter amid the stone quarries of Clamart. What he suffered during this
night, the whole day of the sixth of April, the night, and again the
next day, there is no one to tell.

The door of the house in th