The escape thus ingeniously planned was carried out with a success that it is quite pleasant to read of, even to this moment. The police never awoke at all to the fact of the flight until the luggage followed the fugitives, and then Madame de Staël was beyond their reach. History draws a veil over the feelings of the Prefect.
At Berne, Schlegel joined the party, and Auguste de Staël separated from it, in order to return to Coppet and see after things there. The travellers pushed on, but, because of Madame de Staël's health, in no great haste, through Switzerland and the Tyrol. Her one haunting fear all this time was that in Bavaria an agent of the French Government might have preceded her with an order for her arrest. The abject subservience of the German Governments at that time to Napoleon made it very likely that in such a case passports would be so much waste-paper.
Vienna was reached in safety, and there Madame de Staël at first determined to remain three weeks, while a courier was despatched to Wilna to obtain the Russian passport from the Emperor Alexander. The first ten days of her sojourn were marked by cloudless pleasure. Security had returned to her; and, after her late repression, varied chiefly by the Prefect of Geneva's solemn exhortations, it was a real delight to find herself in the midst of a society where Napoleon was frankly abused. But the Emperor and Empress of Austria were at Dresden, and the official mind, left to itself, soon became frightened at the idea of sheltering the dangerous authoress. Spies were stationed at her door, and cropped up, like poisonous fungi, with silent rapidity along her path. Moreover, an order had arrived for the arrest and return of Rocca as a French
