who had been in the royal kitchen, and who contrived to obtain employment in the Temple, when conveying the meals of the royal family to their apartments, or articles he had purchased for them, managed to give Madame Elisabeth news of the King.  Next day, the Princess, when Turgi was removing the dinner, slipped into his hand a bit of paper on which she had pricked with a pin a request for a word from her brother’s own hand.  Turgi gave this paper to Clery, who conveyed it to the King the same evening; and he, being allowed writing materials while preparing his defence, wrote Madame Elisabeth a short note.  An answer was conveyed in a ball of cotton, which Turgi threw under Clery’s bed while passing the door of his room.  Letters were also passed between the Princess’s room and that of Clery, who lodged beneath her, by means of a string let down and drawn up at night.  This communication with his family was a great comfort to the King, who, nevertheless, constantly cautioned his faithful servant.  “Take care,” he would say kindly, “you expose yourself too much.”

[The King’s natural benevolence was constantly shown while in the Temple.  His own dreadful position never prevented him from sympathy with the smaller troubles of others.  A servant in the Temple named Marchand, the father of a family, was robbed of two hundred francs, —­his wages for two months.  The King observed his distress, asked its cause, and gave Clery the amount to be handed to Marchand, with a caution not to speak of it to any one, and, above all, not to thank the King, lest it should injure him with his employers.]

During his separation from his family the King refused to go into the garden.  When it was proposed to him he said, “I cannot make up my mind to go out alone; the walk was agreeable to me only when I shared it with my family.”  But he did not allow himself to dwell on painful reflections.  He talked freely to the municipals on guard, and surprised them by his varied and practical knowledge of their trades, and his interest in their domestic affairs.  On the 19th December the King’s breakfast was served as usual; but, being a fast-day, he refused to take anything.  At dinner-time the King said to Clery, “Fourteen years ago you were up earlier than you were to-day; it is the day my daughter was born—­today, her birthday,” he repeated, with tears, “and to be prevented from seeing her!” Madame Royale had wished for a calendar; the King ordered Clery to buy her the “Almanac of the Republic,” which had replaced the “Court Almanac,” and ran through it, marking with a pencil many names.

“On Christmas Day,” Says Clery, “the King wrote his will.”

[Madame Royale says:  “On the 26th December, St. Stephen’s Day, my father made his will, because he expected to be assassinated that day on his way to the bar of the Convention.  He went thither, nevertheless, with his usual calmness.”—­“Royal Memoirs,” p. 196.]

On the 26th December, 1792, the King appeared a second time before the Convention.  M. de Seze, labouring night and day, had completed his defence.  The King insisted on excluding from it all that was too rhetorical, and confining it to the mere discussion of essential points.