One of which was to stir up against me the populace by
secret maneuvers; and the other to drive me away by open force,
without giving a reason for so doing. I could not, therefore, depend
upon a safe retreat, unless I went in search of it farther than my
strength and the season seemed likely to permit. These circumstances
again bringing to my recollection the ideas which had lately
occurred to me, I wished my persecutors to condemn me to perpetual
imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to wander upon the
earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of which I should
make choice; and to this effect I made them a proposal. Two days after
my first letter to M. de Graffenried, I wrote him a second, desiring
he would state what I had proposed to their excellencies. The answer
from Berne to both was an order, conceived in the most formal and
severe terms, to go out of the island, and leave every territory,
mediate and immediate of the republic, within the space of twenty-four
hours, and never to enter them again under the most grievous
penalties.
This was a terrible moment. I have since that time felt greater
anguish, but never have I been more embarrassed. What afflicted me
most was being forced to abandon the project which had made me
desirous to pass the winter in the island. It is now time I should
relate the fatal anecdote which completed my disasters, and involved
in my ruin an unfortunate people whose rising virtues already promised
to equal those of Rome and Sparta.
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