“My apartment appears like a barrack, like a bear garden, like anything but what it was!  Numbers of valuable things have been destroyed, numbers carried off.  Still, notwithstanding all the horrors of these last days, it delights me to be able to tell you that no one in the service of the Royal Family failed in duty at this dreadful crisis.  I think we may firmly rely on the inviolable attachment of all around us.  No jealousy, no considerations of etiquette, stood in the way of their exertions to show themselves worthy of the situations they hold.  The Queen showed the greatest intrepidity during the whole of these trying scenes.

“At present, I can say no more.  Petion, the Mayor of Paris, has just been announced; and, I believe, he wishes for an audience of Her Majesty, though he never made his appearance during the whole time of the riots in the palace.  Adieu, mia cara Inglesina!”

The receipt of this letter, however it might have affected me to hear what Her Highness suffered, in common with the rest of the unfortunate royal inmates of the Tuileries, gave me extreme pleasure from the assurance it contained of the firmness of those nearest to the sufferers.  I was also sincerely gratified in reflecting on the probity and disinterested fidelity of this worthy man, which contrasted him, so strikingly and so advantageously to himself, with many persons of birth and education, whose attachment could not stand the test of the trying scenes of the Revolution, which made them abandon and betray, where they had sworn an allegiance to which they were doubly bound by gratitude.

My man servant was attended, and taken the greatest care of.  The Princess never missed a day in sending to inquire after his health; and, on his recovery, the Queen herself not only graciously condescended to see him, but, besides making him a valuable present, said many flattering and obliging things of his bravery and disinterestedness.

I should scarcely have deemed these particulars honourable as they are to the feelings of the illustrious personages from whom they proceeded—­worth mentioning in a work of this kind, did they not give indications of character rarely to be met with (and, in their case, how shamefully rewarded!), from having occurred at a crisis when their minds were occupied in affairs of such deep importance, and amidst the appalling dangers which hourly threatened their own existence.

Her Majesty’s correspondence with foreign Courts had been so much increased by these scenes of horror, especially her correspondence with her relations in Italy, that, ere long, I was sent for back to Paris.

SECTION XV.

Journal of the Princess resumed and concluded: