CHAPTER VIII.

During July the correspondence of M. Bertrand de Molleville with the King and Queen was most active.  M. de Marsilly, formerly a lieutenant of the Cent-Suisses of the Guard, was the bearer of the letters.

[I received by night only the King’s answer, written with his own hand, in the margin of my letter.  I always sent him back with the day’s letter that to which he had replied the day before, so that my letters and his answers, of which I contented myself with taking notes only, never remained with me twenty-four hours.  I proposed this arrangement to his Majesty to remove all uneasiness from his mind; my letters were generally delivered to the King or the Queen by M. de Marsilly, captain of the King’s Guard, whose attachment and fidelity were known to their Majesties.  I also sometimes employed M. Bernard de Marigny, who had left Brest for the purpose of sharing with his Majesty’s faithful servants the dangers which threatened the King.—­“Memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville,” vol. ii., p. 12.]

He came to me the first time with a note from the Queen directed to M. Bertrand himself.  In this note the Queen said:  “Address yourself with full confidence to Madame Campan; the conduct of her brother in Russia has not at all influenced her sentiments; she is wholly devoted to us; and if, hereafter, you should have anything to say to us verbally, you may rely entirely upon her devotion and discretion.”

The mobs which gathered almost nightly in the faubourgs alarmed the Queen’s friends; they entreated her not to sleep in her room on the ground floor of the Tuileries.  She removed to the first floor, to a room which was between the King’s apartments and those of the Dauphin.  Being awake always from daybreak, she ordered that neither the shutters nor the window-blinds should be closed, that her long sleepless nights might be the less weary.  About the middle of one of these nights, when the moon was shining into her bedchamber, she gazed at it, and told me that in a month she should not see that moon unless freed from her chains, and beholding the King at liberty.  She then imparted to me all that was concurring to deliver them; but said that the opinions of their intimate advisers were alarmingly at variance; that some vouched for complete success, while others pointed out insurmountable dangers.  She added that she possessed the itinerary of the march of the Princes and the King of Prussia:  that on such a day they would be at Verdun, on another day at such a place, that Lille was about to be besieged, but that M. de J-----, whose prudence and intelligence the King, as well as herself, highly valued, alarmed them much respecting the success of that siege, and made them apprehensive that, even were the commandant devoted to them, the civil authority, which by the constitution gave great power to the mayors of towns, would overrule the military commandant.  She was