The Council of the Commune, becoming aware of the interest which these sad promenades excited, and the sympathy with which they were observed from the neighbouring houses, ordered that the spaces between the battlements should be filled up with shutters, which intercepted the view.  But while the rules for the Queen’s captivity were again made more strict, some of the municipal commissioners tried slightly to alleviate it, and by means of M. de Hue, who was at liberty in Paris, and the faithful Turgi, who remained in the Tower, some communications passed between the royal family and their friends.  The wife of Tison, who waited on the Queen, suspected and finally denounced these more lenient guardians,—­[Toulan, Lepitre, Vincent, Bruno, and others.]—­who were executed, the royal prisoners being subjected to a close examination.

“On the 20th of April,” says Madame Royale, “my mother and I had just gone to bed when Hebert arrived with several municipals.  We got up hastily, and these men read us a decree of the Commune directing that we should be searched.  My poor brother was asleep; they tore him from his bed under the pretext of examining it.  My mother took him up, shivering with cold.  All they took was a shopkeeper’s card which my mother had happened to keep, a stick of sealing-wax from my aunt, and from me ’une sacre coeur de Jesus’ and a prayer for the welfare of France.  The search lasted from half-past ten at night till four o’clock in the morning.”

The next visit of the officials was to Madame Elisabeth alone; they found in her room a hat which the King had worn during his imprisonment, and which she had begged him to give her as a souvenir.  They took it from her in spite of her entreaties.  “It was suspicious,” said the cruel and contemptible tyrants.

The Dauphin became ill with fever, and it was long before his mother, who watched by him night and day, could obtain medicine or advice for him.  When Thierry was at last allowed to see him his treatment relieved the most violent symptoms, but, says Madame Royale, “his health was never reestablished.  Want of air and exercise did him great mischief, as well as the kind of life which this poor child led, who at eight years of age passed his days amidst the tears of his friends, and in constant anxiety and agony.”

While the Dauphin’s health was causing his family such alarm, they were deprived of the services of Tison’s wife, who became ill, and finally insane, and was removed to the Hotel Dieu, where her ravings were reported to the Assembly and made the ground of accusations against the royal prisoners.

[This woman, troubled by remorse, lost her reason, threw herself at the feet of the Queen, implored her pardon, and disturbed the Temple for many days with the sight and the noise of her madness.  The Princesses, forgetting the denunciations of this unfortunate being, in consideration of her repentance and insanity, watched over her by turns, and deprived themselves of their own food to relieve her.—­Lamartine, “History of the Girondists,” vol. iii., p.140.]