Part 22

As a part of the room was occupied by men, our next business was to separate our corner by a curtain, which we had fortunately brought with our bedding; and this done, we spread our mattresses and lay down, while the servants were employed in getting us tea. As soon as we were a little refreshed, and the room was quiet for the night, we made up our beds as well as we could, and endeavoured to sleep. Mad. de ____ and the two maids soon forgot their cares; but, though worn out by fatigue, the agitation of my mind conquered the disposition of my body. I seemed to have lost the very faculty of sleeping, and passed this night with almost as little repose as the two preceding ones. Before morning I discovered that remaining so long in damp clothes, and the other circumstances of our journey, had given me cold, and that I had all the symptoms of a violent fever.

I leave you to conjecture, for it would be impossible to detail, all the misery of illness in such a situation; and I will only add, that by the care of Mad. de ____, whose health was happily less affected, and the attention of my maid, I was able to leave the room in about three weeks. --I must now secrete this for some days, but will hereafter resume my little narrative, and explain how I have ventured to write so much even in the very neighbourhood of the Guillotine.--Adieu.

Maison d'Arret, Arras, Oct. 17, 1793.

On the night I concluded my last, a report that Commissioners were to visit the house on the morrow obliged me to dispose of my papers beyond the possibility of their being found. The alarm is now over, and I proceed.--After something more than three weeks indisposition, I began to walk in the yard, and make acquaintance with our fellow-prisoners. Mad. de ____ had already discovered several that were known to her, and I now found, with much regret, that many of my Arras friends were here also. Having been arrested some days before us, they were rather more conveniently lodged, and taking the wretchedness of our garret into consideration, it was agreed that Mad. de ____ should move to a room less crouded than our own, and a dark closet that would just contain my mattresses was resigned to me. It is indeed a very sorry apartment, but as it promises me a refuge where I may sometimes read or write in peace, I have taken possession of it very thankfully. A lock on the door is not the least of its recommendations, and by way of securing myself against all surprize, I have contrived an additional fastening by means of a large nail and the chain of a portmanteau--I have likewise, under pretext of keeping out the wind, papered over the cracks of the door, and provided myself with a sand-bag, so that no one can perceive when I have a light later than usual.--With these precautions, I can amuse myself by putting on paper any little occurrences that I think worth preserving, without much danger, and perhaps the details of a situation so new and so strange may not be uninteresting to you.

We are now about three hundred in number of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions--ci-devant noblesse, parents, wives, sisters, and other relations of emigrants--priests who have not taken the oaths, merchants and shopkeepers accused of monopoly, nuns, farmers that are said to have concealed their corn, miserable women, with scarcely clothes to cover them, for not going to the constitutional mass, and many only because they happened to be at an inn, or on a visit from their own town, when a general arrest took place of all who are what is called etrangers, that is to say, not foreigners only, but not inhabitants of the town where they are found.--There are, besides, various descriptions of people sent here on secret informations, and who do not themselves know the precise reason of their confinement. I imagine we are subject to nearly the same rules as the common prisons: no one is permitted to enter or speak to a "detenu" but at the gate, and in presence of the guard; and all letters, parcels, baskets, &c. are examined previous to their being either conveyed from hence or received. This, however, depends much on the political principles of those who happen to be on guard: an aristocrate or a constitutionalist will read a letter with his eyes half shut, and inspect bedding and trunks in a very summary way; while a thorough-paced republican spells every syllable of the longest epistle, and opens all the roasted pigs or duck-pies before he allows their ingress.--None of the servants are suffered to go out, so that those who have not friends in the town to procure them necessaries are obliged to depend entirely on the keeper, and, of course, pay extravagantly dear for every thing; but we are so much in the power of these people, that it is prudent to submit to such impositions without murmuring.

I did not, during my illness, read the papers, and have to-day been amusing myself with a large packet. General Houchard, I find, is arrested, for not having, as they say he might have done, driven all the English army into the sea, after raising the siege of Dunkirk; yet a few weeks ago their utmost hopes scarcely amounted to the relief of the town: but their fears having subsided, they have now leisure to be jealous; and I know no situation so little to be envied under the present government as that of a successful General.--Among all their important avocations, the Convention have found time to pass a decree for obliging women to wear the national cockade, under pain of imprisonment; and the municipality of the superb Paris have ordered that the King's family shall, in future, use pewter spoons and eat brown bread!

Oct. 18.

I begin to be very uneasy about Mr. and Mrs. D____. I have written several times, and still receive no answer. I fear they are in a confinement more severe than my own, or that our letters miscarry. A servant of Mad. de ____'s was here this morning, and no letters had come to Peronne, unless, as my friend endeavours to persuade me, the man would not venture to give them in presence of the guard, who par excellence happened to be a furious Jacobin.--We had the mortification of hearing that a very elegant carriage of Mad. de ____'s has been put in requisition, and taken to convey a tinman and two farriers who were going to Paris on a mission--that two of her farmer's best horses had been killed by hard work in taking provisions to the army, and that they are now cutting down the young wood on her estate to make pikes.--The seals are still on our effects, and the guard remains in possession, which has put us to the expence of buying a variety of articles we could not well dispense with: for, on examining the baggage after our arrival, we found it very much diminshed; and this has happened to almost all the people who have been arrested. Our suspicions naturally fall on the dragoons, and it is not very surprizing that they should attempt to steal from those whom they are certain would not dare to make any complaint.

Many of our fellow-prisoners are embarrassed by their servants having quitted them.--One Collot d'Herbois, a member of the Commite de Salut Public, has proposed to the Convention to collect all the gentry, priests, and suspected people, into different buildings, which should be previously mined for the purpose, and, on the least appearance of insurrection, to blow them up all together.--You may perhaps conclude, that such a project was received with horror, and the adviser of it treated as a monster. Our humane legislature, however, very coolly sent it to the committee to be discussed, without any regard to the terror and apprehension which the bare idea of a similar proposal must inspire in those who are the destined victims. I cannot myself believe that this abominable scheme is intended for execution, but it has nevertheless created much alarm in timid minds, and has occasioned in part the defection of the servants I have just mentioned. Those who were sufficiently attached to their masters and mistresses to endure the confinement and privations of a Maison d'Arret, tremble at the thoughts of being involved in the common ruin of a gunpowder explosion; and the men seem to have less courage than the women, at least more of the latter have consented to remain here.--It was atrocious to publish such a conception, though nothing perhaps was intended by it, as it may deprive many people of faithful attendants at a time when they are most necessary.

We have a tribunal revolutionnaire here, with its usual attendant the Guillotine, and executions are now become very frequent. I know not who are the sufferers, and avoid enquiring through fear of hearing the name of some acquaintance. As far as I can learn, the trials are but too summary, and little other evidence is required than the fortune, rank, and connections of the accused. The Deputy who is Commissioner for this department is one Le Bon, formerly a priest--and, I understand, of an immoral and sanguinary character, and that it is he who chiefly directs the verdicts of the juries according to his personal hatred or his personal interest.--We have lately had a very melancholy instance of the terror created by this tribunal, as well as of the notions that prevail of its justice. A gentleman of Calais, who had an employ under the government, was accused of some irregularity in his accounts, and, in consequence, put under arrest. The affair became serious, and he was ordered to prison, as a preliminary to his trial. When the officers entered his apartment to take him, regarding the judicial procedure as a mere form, and concluding it was determined to sacrifice him, he in a frenzy of despair seized the dogs in the chimney, threw them at the people, and, while they escaped to call for assistance, destroyed himself by cutting his arteries.--It has appeared, since the death of this unfortunate man, that the charge against him was groundless, and that he only wanted time to arrange his papers, in order to exonerate himself entirely.

Oct. 19.

We are disturbed almost nightly by the arrival of fresh prisoners, and my first question of a morning is always _"N'est il pas du monde entre la nuit?"_--Angelique's usual reply is a groan, and _"Ah, mon Dieu, oui;" "Une dixaine de pretres;"_ or, _"Une trentaine de nobles:"_ ["Did not some people arrive in the night?"]--"Yes, God help us--half a score priests, or twenty or thirty gentry." And I observe the depth of the groan is nearly in proportion to the quality of the person she commiserates. Thus, a groan for a Comte, a Marquise, or a Priest, is much more audible than one for a simple gentlewoman or a merchant; and the arrival of a Bishop (especially if not one of the constitutional clergy) is announced in a more sorrowful key than either.

While I was walking in the yard this morning, I was accosted by a female whom I immediately recollected to be Victoire, a very pretty _couturiere,_ [Sempstress.] who used to work for me when I was at Panthemont, and who made your last holland shirts. I was not a little surprized to see her in such a situation, and took her aside to enquire her history. I found that her mother was dead, and that her brother having set up a little shop at St. Omer, had engaged her to go and live with him. Being under five-and-twenty, the last requisition obliged him to depart for the army, and leave her to carry on the business alone. Three weeks after, she was arrested at midnight, put into a cart, and brought hither. She had no time to take any precautions, and their little commerce, which was in haberdashery, as well as some work she had in hand, is abandoned to the mercy of the people that arrested her. She has reason to suppose that her crime consists in not having frequented the constitutional mass; and that her accuser is a member of one of the town committees, who, since her brother's absence, has persecuted her with dishonourable proposals, and, having been repulsed, has taken this method of revenging himself. Her conjecture is most probably right, as, since her imprisonment, this man has been endeavouring to make a sort of barter with her for her release.

I am really concerned for this poor creature, who is at present a very good girl, but if she remain here she will not only be deprived of her means of living, but perhaps her morals may be irremediably corrupted. She is now lodged in a room with ten or dozen men, and the house is so crouded that I doubt whether I have interest enough to procure her a more decent apartment.

What can this strange policy tend to, that thus exposes to ruin and want a girl of one-and-twenty--not for any open violation of the law, but merely for her religious opinions; and this, too, in a country which professes toleration as the basis of its government?

My friend, Mad. de ____ s'ennui terribly; she is not incapable of amusing herself, but is here deprived of the means. We have no corner we can call our own to sit in, and no retreat when we wish to be out of a croud except my closet, where we can only see by candle-light. Besides, she regrets her employments, and projects for the winter. She had begun painting a St. Theresa, and translating an Italian romance, and had nearly completed the education of a dozen canary birds, who would in a month's time have accompanied the harp so delightfully, as to overpower the sound of the instrument. I believe if we had a few more square inches of room, she would be tempted, if not to bring the whole chorus, at least to console herself with two particular favourites, distinguished by curious topknots, and rings about their necks.

With all these feminine propensities, she is very amiable, and her case is indeed singularly cruel and unjust.--Left, at an early age, under the care of her brother, she was placed by him at Panthemont (where I first became acquainted with her) with an intention of having her persuaded to take the veil; but finding her averse from a cloister, she remained as a pensioner only, till a very advantageous marriage with the Marquis de ____, who was old enough to be her father, procured her release. About two years ago he died, and left her a very considerable fortune, which the revolution has reduced to nearly one-third of its former value. The Comte de ____, her brother, was one of the original patriots, and embraced with great warmth the cause of the people; but having very narrowly escaped the massacres of September, 1792, he immediately after emigrated.

Thus, my poor friend, immured by her brother till the age of twenty-two in a convent, then sacrificed three years to a husband of a disagreeable temper and unsuitable age, is now deprived of the first liberty she ever enjoyed, and is made answerable for the conduct of a man over whom she has no sort of influence. It is not, therefore, extraordinary that she cannot reconcile herself to her present situation, and I am really often more concerned on her account than my own. Cut off from her usual resources, she has no amusement but wandering about the house; and if her other causes of uneasiness be not augmented, they are at least rendered more intolerable by her inability to fill up her time.--This does not arise from a deficiency of understanding, but from never having been accustomed to think. Her mind resembles a body that is weak, not by nature, but from want of exercise; and the number of years she has passed in a convent has given her that mixture of childishness and romance, which, my making frivolities necessary, renders the mind incapable of exertion or self-support.

Oct. 20.

The unfortunate Queen, after a trial of some days, during which she seems to have behaved with great dignity and fortitude, is no longer sensible of the regrets of her friends or the malice of her enemies. It is singular, that I have not yet heard her death mentioned in the prison --every one looks grave and affects silence. I believe her death has not occasioned an effect so universal as that of the King, and whatever people's opinions may be, they are afraid of expressing them: for it is said, though I know not with what truth, that we are surrounded by spies, and several who have the appearance of being prisoners like ourselves have been pointed out to me as the objects of this suspicion.

I do not pretend to undertake the defence of the Queen's imputed faults-- yet I think there are some at least which one may be very fairly permitted to doubt. Compassion should not make me an advocate for guilt --but I may, without sacrificing morals to pity, venture to observe, that the many scandalous histories circulated to her prejudice took their rise at the birth of the Dauphin,* which formed so insurmountable a bar to the views of the Duke of Orleans.--

* Nearly at the same time, and on the same occasion, there were literary partizans of the Duke of Orleans, who endeavoured to persuade the people that the man with the iron mask, who had so long excited curiosity and eluded conjecture, was the real son of Louis XIII.--and Louis XIV. in consequence, supposititious, and only the illegitimate offspring of Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria--that the spirit of ambition and intrigue which characterized this Minister had suggested this substitution to the lawful heir, and that the fears of the Queen and confusion of the times had obliged her to acquiesce:

"Cette opinion ridicule, et dont les dates connues de l'histoire demontrent l'absurdite, avoit eu des partisans en France--elle tendoit a avilir la maison regnante, et a persuader au peuple que le trone n'appartient pas aux descendans de Louis XIV. prince furtivement sutstitue, mais a la posterite du second fils de Louis XIII. qui est la tige de la branche d'Orleans, et qui est reconnue comme descendant legitimement, et sans objection, du Roi Louis XIII."

--Nouvelles Considerations sur la Masque de Fer, Memoirs de Richelieu.

"This ridiculous opinion, the absurdity of which is demonstrated by historical dates, had not been without its partizans in France.--It tended to degrade the reigning family, and to make the people believe that the throne did not of right belong to the descendants of Louis XIV. (a prince surreptitiously intruded) but to the posterity of the second son of Louis XIII. from whom is derived the branch of Orleans, and who was, without dispute, the legitimate and unobjectionable offspring of Louis XIII."

--New Considerations on the Iron Mask.--Memoirs of the Duc de Richelieu.

The author of the above Memoirs adds, that after the taking of the Bastille, new attempts were made to propagate this opinion, and that he himself had refuted it to many people, by producing original letters and papers, sufficiently demonstrative of its absurdity.

--He might hope, by popularity, to supersede the children of the Count d'Artois, who was hated; but an immediate heir to the Crown could be removed only by throwing suspicions on his legitimacy. These pretensions, it is true, were so absurd, and even incredible, that had they been urged at the time, no inference in the Queen's favour would have been admitted from them; but as the existence of such projects, however absurd and iniquitous, has since been demonstrated, one may now, with great appearance of reason, allow them some weight in her justification.

The affair of the necklace was of infinite disservice to the Queen's reputation; yet it is remarkable, that the most furious of the Jacobins are silent on this head as far as it regarded her, and always mention the Cardinal de Rohan in terms that suppose him to be the culpable party: but, "whatever her faults, her woes deserve compassion;" and perhaps the moralist, who is not too severe, may find some excuse for a Princess, who, at the age of sixteen, possibly without one real friend or disinterested adviser, became the unrestrained idol of the most licentious Court in Europe. Even her enemies do not pretend that her fate was so much a merited punishment as a political measure: they alledge, that while her life was yet spared, the valour of their troops was checked by the possibility of negotiation; and that being no more, neither the people nor armies expecting any thing but execration or revenge, they will be more ready to proceed to the most desperate extremities.--This you will think a barbarous sort of policy, and considering it as national, it appears no less absurd than barbarous; but for the Convention, whose views perhaps extend little farther than to saving their heads, peculating, and receiving their eighteen livres a day, such measures, and such a principle of action, are neither unwise nor unaccountable: "for the wisdom of civilized nations is not their wisdom, nor the ways of civilized people their ways."*--

* I have been informed, by a gentleman who saw the Queen pass in her way to execution, that the short white bed gown and the cap which she wore were discoloured by smoke, and that her whole appearance seemed to have been intended, if possible, to degrade her in the eyes of the multitude. The benevolent mind will recollect with pleasure, that even the Queen's enemies allow her a fortitude and energy of character which must have counteracted this paltry malice, and rendered it incapable of producing any emotion but contempt. On her first being removed to the Conciergerie, she applied for some necessaries; but the humane municipality of Paris refused them, under pretext that the demand was contrary to the system of _la sainte elagite_--"holy equality."

--It was reported that the Queen was offered her life, and the liberty to retire to St. Cloud, her favourite residence, if she would engage the enemy to raise the siege of Maubeuge and withdraw; but that she refused to interfere.

Arras, 1793.

For some days previous to the battle by which Maubeuge was relieved, we had very gloomy apprehensions, and had the French army been unsuccessful and forced to fall back, it is not improbable but the lives of those detained in the _Maison d'Arret_ [House of detention.] might have been sacrificed under pretext of appeasing the people, and to give some credit to the suspicions so industriously inculcated that all their defeats are occasioned by internal enemies. My first care, as soon as I was able to go down stairs, was to examine if the house offered any means of escape in case of danger, and I believe, if we could preserve our recollection, it might be practicable; but I can so little depend on my strength and spirits, should such a necessity occur, that perhaps the consolation of knowing I have a resource is the only benefit I should ever derive from it.

Oct. 21.