he very highest importance. At the
appointed hour he proceeded to the Champs Elysees, with a
brace of pistols ready in his coat-pockets. At the spot
indicated in the letter he perceived a man standing, who
seemed agitated with fear and doubt. He approached and
accosted this man. It was Deutz. A conference was opened,
which ended in a base crime. The next night, by an
arrangement of the police, Deutz was introduced into the
office of the Minister of the Interior. 'You can make a good
thing of this,' said M. Thiers. The Jew shook with agitation
at the idea; his limbs trembled under him, and his
countenance changed. The price of the treachery was settled
without difficulty."

No sooner had Deutz withdrawn than bayonets glittered in every
direction, and commissioners of police rushed into the house, with
pistols in their hands. The duchess had barely time to take refuge,
with three companions, in a small recess behind the fire-place, which
was adroitly concealed by an iron plate back of the chimney. The
police commenced a minute search, calling masons in to aid them. The
walls were sounded with hammers, articles of furniture moved and
broken open. Night came while the search continued. The space in
which they were confined was very narrow, with but one small aperture
for the admission of air. They barely escaped suffocation by applying
their mouths in turn to this hole, but three inches in diameter.

The gendarmes, fully satisfied that the duchess must be concealed
somewhere in the house, took possession of the room and lighted a
fire in the chimney, which converted their hiding-place into a hot
oven. The heat soon became insupportable. The iron plate had become
red-hot. One of the prisoners kicked it down, and said, "We are
coming out; take away the fire." The fire was instantly brushed away,
and the duchess and her companions, after having endured sixteen
hours of almost insupportable torture, came forth in great
exhaustion, and yet the duchess almost gayly said, referring to the
ancient martyr roasted upon a gridiron,

"Gentlemen, you have made war upon me _a la St. Laurent_. I have
nothing to reproach myself with. I have only discharged the duty of a
mother to gain the inheritance of her son."[AM]

[Footnote AM: Memoires de la Duchesse de Berri, pp. 87-90.]

The captive was treated with the respect due to her rank. After a
brief confinement at Nantes, she was transf