for my own reputation, and had the kindness to add that, for my sake as well as for her own, she never would consent to it.  After this conversation I retired to my apartment.  A few minutes later a footman brought me this note from the Queen:  “I have never ceased to give you and yours proofs of my attachment; I wish to tell you in writing that I have full faith in your honour and fidelity, as well as in your other good qualities; and that I ever rely on the zeal and address you exert to serve me.”

[I had just received this letter from the Queen when M. de la Chapelle, commissary-general of the King’s household, and head of the offices of M. de Laporte, minister of the civil list, came to see me.  The palace having been already sacked by the brigands on the 20th of June, 1792, he proposed that I should entrust the paper to him, that he might place it in a safer situation than the apartments of the Queen.  When he returned into his offices he placed the letter she had condescended to write to me behind a large picture in his closet; but on the loth of August M. de la Chapelle was thrown into the prisons of the Abbaye, and the committee of public safety established themselves in his offices, whence they issued all their decrees of death.  There it was that a villainous servant belonging to M. de Laporte went to declare that in the minister’s apartments, under a board in the floor, a number of papers would be found.  They were brought forth, and M. de Laporte was sent to the scaffold, where he suffered for having betrayed the State by serving his master and sovereign.  M. de la Chapelle was saved, as if by a miracle, from the massacres of the 2d of September.  The committee of public safety having removed to the King’s apartments at the Tuileries, M. de la Chapelle had permission to return to his closet to take away some property belonging to him.  Turning round the picture, behind which he had hidden the Queen’s letter, he found it in the place into which he had slipped it, and, delighted to see that I was safe from the ill consequences the discovery of this paper might have brought upon me, he burnt it instantly.  In times of danger a mere nothing may save life or destroy it.—­Madame Campan]

At the moment that I was going to express my gratitude to the Queen I heard a tapping at the door of my room, which opened upon the Queen’s inner corridor.  I opened it; it was the King.  I was confused; he perceived it, and said to me, kindly:  “I alarm you, Madame Campan; I come, however, to comfort you; the Queen has told me how much she is hurt at the injustice of several persons towards you.  But how is it that you complain of injustice and calumny when you see that we are victims of them?  In some of your companions it is jealousy; in the people belonging to the Court it is anxiety.  Our situation is so disastrous, and we have met with so much ingratitude and treachery, that the apprehensions of those who love us are excusable!  I could