The unfortunate Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette ceased to be Sovereigns from the period they were ignominiously dragged to their jail at the Tuileries.  From this moment they were abandoned to the vengeance of miscreants, who were disgracing the nation with unprovoked and useless murders.  But from this moment also the zeal of the Princesses Elizabeth and de Lamballe became redoubled.  Out of one hundred individuals and more, male and female, who had been exclusively occupied about the person of Marie Antoinette, few, excepting this illustrious pair, and the inestimable Clery, remained devoted to the last.  The saint-like virtues of these Princesses, malice itself has not been able to tarnish.  Their love and unalterable friendship became the shield of their unfortunate Sovereigns, and their much injured relatives, till the dart struck their own faithful bosoms.  Princes of the earth! here is a lesson of greatness from the great.

Scarcely had the Princesse de Lamballe been reinstated in the Pavilion of Flora at the Tuileries, when, by the special royal command, and in Her Majesty’s presence, she wrote to most of the nobility, entreating their return to France.  She urged them, by every argument, that there was no other means of saving them and their country from the horrors impending over them and France, should they persevere in their pernicious absence.  In some of these letters, which I copied, there was written on the margin, in the Queen’s hand, “I am at her elbow, and repeat the necessity of your returning, if you love your King, your religion, your Government, and your country.  Marie Antoinette.  Return!  Return!  Return!”

Among these letters, I remember a large envelope directed to the Duchesse de Brisac, then residing alternately at the baths of Albano and the mineral waters at Valdagno, near Vicenza, in the Venetian States.  Her Grace was charged to deliver letters addressed to Her Majesty’s royal brothers, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d’Artois, who were then residing, I think, at Stra, on the Brenta, in company with Madame de Polcatre, Diane de Polignac, and others.

A few days after, I took another envelope, addressed to the Count Dufour, who was at Turin.  It contained letters for M. and Madame de Polignac, M. and Madame de Guiche Grammont, the King’s aunts at Rome, and the two Princesses of Piedmont, wives of His Majesty’s brothers.

If, therefore, a judgment can be formed from the impressions of the Royal Family, who certainly must have had ample information with respect to the spirit which predominated at Paris at that period, could the nobility have been prevailed on to have obeyed the mandates of the Queen and prayers and invocations of the Princess, there can be no doubt that much bloodshed would have been spared, and the page of history never have been sullied by the atrocious names which now stand there as beacons of human infamy.