Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/93

Rh sister Cecilia, after two months' untiring and perilous exertions procured the release of the Williams's, which seems to have been so clandestinely effected that there is no entry of it. They risked their lives by sheltering Rabaut St. Etienne, and after a time went to Switzerland, leaving behind Cecilia, now Madame Coquerel. Helen, who had gone to France as to a land of liberty, hailed the Swiss frontier as an escape from Inferno. Perhaps after all, Barère, whom she suspected of betraying her drawing-room conversations, committed one good action in his life, and facilitated her liberation and departure. She returned after Robespierre's fall; and in July 1796, Wolfe Tone, half displeased at thus losing his incognito, met "my old friend Stone of Hackney" walking in the Tuileries gardens with Miss Williams. He dined with them "very pleasantly." Stone "was very hearty, but H. M. Williams is Miss Jane Bull completely. I was quite gentle and agreeable." This probably means that Tone had to avoid interlarding his conversation with oaths, more suo. After Cecilia's death in 1798 Helen was like a mother to her two boys, one of them the future pastor, Athanase Coquerel père. She admired the Bonaparte of Brumaire, but loathed Bonaparte the despot, and was punished by him with a domiciliary visit and a night's captivity for ignoring him in her Ode on the Peace of 1802. Fox spent an evening with her in that year. The