276 Biografhy of M. Bosc. 



post department, but could not long escape the tempests of the 

 revolution. He had been the intimate friend of Roland, and 

 nothing was able to prevent him openly shewing his attachment 

 to him after his fall ; he Jiad visited Servan at the Conciergerie ; 

 he had always openly seen Madame Roland, whether at it, or 

 in the different prisons. The day on which she was arrested, 

 she had confided her daughter to him, and it was in his hands 

 that she deposited her manuscripts. Roland himself had found 

 an asylum in a small house which M. Bosc rented at the 

 bottom of the wood of Montmorency, and it was from it that 

 by winding paths he betook himself to Rouen, where he was 

 concealed by two friends. This was more than enough to make 

 him lose his employment, and had he remained in Paris it is 

 probable that he would have shared the fate of his friends. 

 Fortunately he had the idea of retiring to that very solitude 

 which had afforded an asylum to Roland. The distance at 

 which he there was from frequented places and roads, the coarse 

 clothes which he wore, and his labouring with his own hands, 

 prevented his neighbourhood from suspecting what he was, and 

 especially from imagining the connexions which he had. 



In this retreat he learned, with inexpressible grief, that Ma- 

 dame Roland had perished on the scaffold, and that on receiv- 

 ing the news her husband had killed himself. He thought him- 

 self" lost one day when on a walk he met Robespierre face to 

 face, whom he heard pronounce his name quite low. But nei- 

 ther grief nor danger could induce him to repel the unfortunate 

 persons who still came to ask an asylum of him. One shudders 

 when he thinks of his concealing in a small garret one of the 

 deputies condemned to the scaffold, at the very moment when 

 chance had brought about his house some of the agents em- 

 ployed in seeking out proscripts. With this unfortunate per- 

 son he sometimes had nothing better to share than snails and 

 wild roots, and in his sickness nothing to offer but the eggs of 

 a single hen, which, at length, was one day killed by a hawk. 

 This very deputy, issuing from his place of concealment, after 

 the 9th Therraidor, saw himself in the course of a few months 

 at the head of that Directory, which, in the fulness of its quick- 

 ly acquired power, made Germany tremble, conquered Italy, 

 dethroned the Pope, the King of Sardinia, and the King of 



