I shall not undertake to judge of the propriety of the King’s impression that there was no safety from the insurgents but in the hall, and under the protection of the Assembly.  Had the members been well disposed towards him, the event might have proved very different.  But there is one thing certain.  The Queen would never have consented to this step but to save the King and her innocent children.  She would have preferred death to the humiliation of being under obligations to her sworn enemies; but she was overcome by the King declaring, with tears in his eyes, that he would not quit the palace without her.  The Princesses Elizabeth and de Lamballe fell at her feet, implored Her Majesty to obey the King, and assured her there was no alternative between instant death and refuge from it in the Assembly.  “Well,” said the Queen, “if our lot be death, let us away to receive it with the national sanction.”

I need not expatiate on the succession of horrors which now overwhelmed the royal sufferers.  Their confinement at the Feuillans, and their subsequent transfer to the Temple, are all topics sufficiently enlarged upon by many who were actors in the scenes to which they led.  The Princesse de Lamballe was, while it was permitted, the companion of their captivity.  But the consolation of her society was considered too great to be continued.  Her fate had no doubt been predetermined; and, unwilling to await the slow proceedings of a trial, which it was thought politic should precede the murder of her royal mistress, it was found necessary to detach her from the wretched inmates of the Temple, in order to have her more completely within the control of the miscreants, who hated her for her virtues.  The expedient was resorted to of casting suspicion upon the correspondence which Her Highness kept up with the exterior of the prison, for the purpose of obtaining such necessaries as were required, in consequence of the utter destitution in which the Royal Family retired from the Tuileries.  Two men, of the names of Devine and Priquet, were bribed to create a suspicion, by their informations against the Queen’s female attendant.  The first declared that on the 18th of August, while he was on duty near the cell of the King, he saw a woman about eleven o’clock in the day come from a room in the centre, holding in one hand three letters, and with the other cautiously opening the door of the right-hand chamber, whence she presently came back without the letters and returned into the centre chamber.  He further asserted that twice, when this woman opened the door, he distinctly saw a letter half-written, and every evidence of an eagerness to hide it from observation.  The second informant, Priquet, swore that, while on duty as morning sentinel on the gallery between the two towers, he saw, through the window of the central chamber, a woman writing with great earnestness and alarm during the whole time he was on guard.

All the ladies were immediately summoned before the authorities.  The hour of the separation between the Princess and her royal friend accorded with the solemnity of the circumstance.  It was nearly midnight when they were torn asunder, and they never met again.