Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

FOR SAVING MADAME DE CUSTINE.37

place the paper on which was inscribed the name of my mother at the bottom of the box, or, at least, to assure himself that it remained there. "When fresh papers were put in, they were, by a species of distributive justice, placed undermost, so that each name should come in its turn. It was the business of Jerome constantly to search out my mother's, and restore it to the bottom place.

I am now only repeating what I have myself often heard Jerome relate. He has told me that, at night, when every one had retired, he has often returned to the office, under the fear that some one might at the last moment have disturbed the order of the papers — that order on which the life of my mother entirely depended. In fact on one occasion her name appeared at the top of the pile ; Jerome shuddered, and again placed it under the others.

Neither I nor the friends who listened to this fearful recital dared to ask Jerome the names of the victims whose death he had hastened in my mother's favour. The latter knew nothing, until after her deliverance from prison, of the stratagem that had saved her life.

When the day of the 9th Thermidor arrived, the prisons were found to be almost emptied; there remained only three sheets in the box of Foucµùer Tim`ille, and it was not likely that many would be added; the bloody spectacles of the Place de la Revolution began to weary the public; and the project of Robespierre and his confidential counsellors was to make an end of the families of the old regime, by commanding a general massacre in the interior of the prisons.