The request was refused, and the officers who
brought the refusal said Clery was in "a frightful state of despair" at
not being allowed to see the royal family; shortly afterwards he was
dismissed from the Temple.
"We had now a little more freedom," continues the Princess; "our guards
even believed that we were about to be sent out of France; but nothing
could calm my mother's agony; no hope could touch her heart, and life or
death became indifferent to her. Fortunately my own affliction increased
my illness so seriously that it distracted her thoughts . . . . My
mother would go no more to the garden, because she must have passed the
door of what had been my father's room, and that she could not bear. But
fearing lest want of air should prove injurious to my brother and me,
about the end of February she asked permission to walk on the leads of the
Tower, and it was granted."
The Council of the Commune, becoming aware of the interest which these sad
promenades excited, and the sympathy with which they were observed from
the neighbouring houses, ordered that the spaces between the battlements
should be filled up with shutters, which intercepted the view. But while
the rules for the Queen's captivity were again made more strict, some of
the municipal commissioners tried slightly to alleviate it, and by means
of M. de Hue, who was at liberty in Paris, and the faithful Turgi, who
remained in the Tower, some communications passed between the royal family
and their friends. The wife of Tison, who waited on the Queen, suspected
and finally denounced these more lenient guardians,--[Toulan, Lepitre,
Vincent, Bruno, and others.]--who were executed, the royal prisoners being
subjected to a close examination.
"On the 20th of April," says Madame Royale, "my mother and I had just gone
to bed when Hebert arrived with several municipals. We got up hastily,
and these men read us a decree of the Commune directing that we should be
searched. My poor brother was asleep; they tore him from his bed under
the pretext of examining it. My mother took him up, shivering with cold.
All they took was a shopkeeper's card which my mother had happened to
keep, a stick of sealing-wax from my aunt, and from me 'une sacre coeur de
Jesus' and a prayer for the welfare of France. The search lasted from
half-past ten at night till four o'clock in the morning."
The next visit of the officials was to Madame Elisabeth alone; they found
in her r
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