She admired, in turn, the probity of Necker and
the genius of Mirabeau; but the current of disorder finally found its
way to her, and swept away her household peace among the innumerable
wrecks that marked its passage. Implicated as the depository of some
papers supposed to be of treasonable character, she was arrested and
imprisoned in Paris, her son and Deschartres being officially separated
from her and detained at Passy. The imprisonment lasted some months, and
its tedium was beguiled by the most fervent love-letters between the boy
of sixteen and his mother. The sorrow of this separation, George says,
metamorphosed the sickly, spoiled child into a fervent and resolute
youth, whose subsequent career was full of courage and self-denial. Of
the Revolution she writes:--
"In my eyes, it is one of the phases of evangelical life: a tumultuous,
bloody life, terrible at certain moments, full of convulsions, of
delirium, and of sobbing. It is the violent contest of the principle of
equality preached by Jesus, and passing, now like a radiant light, now
like a burning torch, from hand to hand, to our own days, against the
old pagan world, which is not destroyed, which will not be for a long
time yet, in spite of the mission of Christ, and so many other divine
missions, in spite of so many stakes, scaffolds, and martyrs.
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