ay attention to nothing; you
believe that nobody is thinking of any harm. Now I know, I have been
told, I have guessed, I foresee, I warn you," etc. "Come now, my dear,
leave me alone. You are only wasting your time: I foresee that I shall
never foresee things: that's your business." She is the supplement to
me, and hence when I am separated from her, as I am now, I suffer
absurdly from being obliged to think about my own affairs; I would
rather have to chop wood all day.... My children ought to kiss her very
steps; for my part, I have no gift for education. She has such a gift,
that I look upon it as nothing less than the eighth endowment of the
Holy Ghost; I mean a certain fond persecution by which it is given her
to torment her children from morning to night to do something, not to do
something, to learn--and yet without for a moment losing their tender
affection for her. How can she manage it? I cannot make it out.' She was
laughingly called by himself and her friends, Madame Prudence. It is
certain that few women have found more necessity for the qualities
implied in this creditable nickname.

They had not been married many years before they were overtaken by
irreparable disaster. The French Revolution broke out, and Savoy was
invaded by the troops of the new Republic. Count De Maistre, with his
wife and children, fled from Chambery across the Alps to Aosta. '_Ma
chere amie_,' he said to his wife, by the side of a great rock which he
never afterwards forgot, 'the step that we are taking to-day is
irrevocable; it decides our lot for life;' and the presentiment was
true. Soon the _Loi des Allobroges_ was promulgated, which enjoined upon
all who had left their homes in Savoy to return instantly, under pain of
confiscation of all their property. It was the very depth of winter.
Madame de Maistre was in the ninth month of her pregnancy. She knew that
her husband would endure anything rather than expose her to the risks of
a journey in such a season. So, urged by a desire to save something from
the wreck of their fortune by compliance with the French decree, she
seized the opportunity of her husband's absence at Turin, and started
for Savoy without acquainting him with her design. She crossed the Great
St. Bernard in the beginning of January on the back of a mule,
accompanied by her two little children wrapped in blankets. The Count,
on his return to Aosta two or three days afterwards, forthwith set off
in her steps, in