“Ask aloud for what you want,” said Chaumette, retreating as though he feared being suspected of pity.

“I asked for a piece of your bread,” replied the King.

“Divide it with me,” said Chaumette.  “It is a Spartan breakfast.  If I had a root I would give you half.”—­[Lamartine’s “History of the Girondists,” edit. 1870, vol. ii., p. 313.]

Soon after six in the evening the King returned to the Temple.  “He seemed tired,” says Clery, simply, “and his first wish was to be led to his family.  The officers refused, on the plea that they had no orders.  He insisted that at least they should be informed of his return, and this was promised him.  The King ordered me to ask for his supper at half-past eight.  The intervening hours he employed in his usual reading, surrounded by four municipals.  When I announced that supper was served, the King asked the commissaries if his family could not come down.  They made no reply.  ‘But at least,’ the King said, ’my son will pass the night in my room, his bed being here?’ The same silence.  After supper the King again urged his wish to see his family.  They answered that they must await the decision of the Convention.  While I was undressing him the King said, ’I was far from expecting all the questions they put to me.’  He lay down with perfect calmness.  The order for my removal during the night was not executed.”  On the King’s return to the Temple being known, “my mother asked to see him instantly,” writes Madame Royale.  “She made the same request even to Chambon, but received no answer.  My brother passed the night with her; and as he had no bed, she gave him hers, and sat up all the night in such deep affliction that we were afraid to leave her; but she compelled my aunt and me to go to bed.  Next day she again asked to see my father, and to read the newspapers, that she might learn the course of the trial.  She entreated that if she was to be denied this indulgence, his children, at least, might see him.  Her requests were referred to the Commune.  The newspapers were refused; but my brother and I were to be allowed to see my father on condition of being entirely separated from my mother.  My father replied that, great as his happiness was in seeing his children, the important business which then occupied him would not allow of his attending altogether to his son, and that his daughter could not leave her mother.”

[During their last interview Madame Elisabeth had given Clery one of her handkerchiefs, saying, “You shall keep it so long as my brother continues well; if he becomes ill, send it to me among my nephew’s things.”]

The Assembly having, after a violent debate, resolved that Louis XVI. should have the aid of counsel, a deputation was sent to the Temple to ask whom he would choose.  The King named Messieurs Target and Tronchet.  The former refused his services on the ground that he had discontinued practice since 1785; the latter complied at once with the King’s request; and while the Assembly was considering whom to, nominate in Target’s place, the President received a letter from the venerable Malesherbes,