_August_ 15.--In the evening Ampère read to us a comedy called 'Beatrix,' by a writer of some reputation, and a member of the Institut.
It was very bad, full of exaggerated sentiments, forced situations, and the cant of philanthropic despotism.
An actress visits the court of a German grand duke. He is absent. His mother, the duchess, receives her as an equal. The second son falls in love with her at first sight and wishes to marry her. She is inclined to consent, when another duchy falls in, the elder duke resigns to his brother, he becomes king, presses their marriage, his mother does not oppose, and thereupon Beatrix makes a speech, orders her horses, and drives off to act somewhere else.
Ampère reads admirably, but no excellence of reading could make such absurdities endurable. It was written for Ristori, who acted Beatrix in French with success.
_Friday, August_ 16.--We talked at breakfast of 1793.
'It is difficult,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'to believe that the French of that day were our ancestors.'
'They resembled you,' I said, 'only in two things: in military courage, and in political cowardice.'
'They had,' she replied, 'perhaps more passive courage than we have.[1] My great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my great-aunt, were guillotined on the same day. My great-great-grandmother was ninety years old. When interrogated, she begged them to speak loud, as she was deaf. 'Écrivez,' said Fouquier Tinville, 'que la citoyenne Noailles a conspiré sourdement contre la République.' They were dragged to the Place de la République in the same _tombereau_, and sat waiting their turn on the same bench.
'My great-aunt was young and beautiful. The executioner, while fastening her to the plank, had a rose in his mouth. The Abbé de Noailles, who was below the scaffold, disguised, to give them, at the risk of his life, a sign of benediction, was asked how they looked.
'"Comme si,' he said, 'elles allaient à la messe."'
'The habit,' said Ampère, 'of seeing people die produces indifference even to one's own death. You see that among soldiers. You see it in epidemics. But this indifference, or, to use a more proper word, this resignation, helped to prolong the Reign of Terror. If the victims had resisted, if, like Madame du Barry, they had struggled with the executioner, it would have excited horror.'