It now will be necessary to give the reasons for the extraordinary
self-devotion of a good and beautiful woman; and this, in a few words,
is her past history.
Three brothers, simple laboring men, named Fischer, and living in a
village situated on the furthest frontier of Lorraine, were compelled
by the Republican conscription to set out with the so-called army of
the Rhine.
In 1799 the second brother, Andre, a widower, and Madame Hulot's
father, left his daughter to the care of his elder brother, Pierre
Fischer, disabled from service by a wound received in 1797, and made a
small private venture in the military transport service, an opening he
owed to the favor of Hulot d'Ervy, who was high in the commissariat.
By a very obvious chance Hulot, coming to Strasbourg, saw the Fischer
family. Adeline's father and his younger brother were at that time
contractors for forage in the province of Alsace.
Adeline, then sixteen years of age, might be compared with the famous
Madame du Barry, like her, a daughter of Lorraine. She was one of
those perfect and striking beauties--a woman like Madame Tallien,
finished with peculiar care by Nature, who bestows on them all her
choicest gifts--distinction, dignity, grace, refinement, elegance,
flesh of a superior texture, and a complexion mingled in the unknown
laboratory where good luck presides.
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