Search was begun inside the house, furniture was opened when the keys were discovered, broken into when they were missing. Sappers and masons sounded the floors and walls with great blows from axes and hammers. Architects, taken into every room, declared it was impossible, after comparing the internal construction with the external for them to enclose a hiding-place or, indeed, to discover it if they did; in one of the rooms they found various articles, such as prints, jewellery, silver, belonging to the ladies Duguigny, which, at that juncture, added to the certainty of the princess's residence in the house. When the architects reached the attic, whether from ignorance or from generosity on their part, they declared that here, less than any other place, there could not be a secret hiding-place. They then passed on to the neighbouring houses, where the search was continued; after an instant the duchess heard the blows of a hammer being struck at the wall of the room next to her hiding-place; they were hit with such force that pieces of plaster were loosened and fell on the captives and, for a moment, they were afraid that the whole wall would crash down upon them. Madame also heard the abuse and swearing of the tired soldiers enraged at the fruitlessness of their searchings.
"We shall be cut to pieces," she said, "that will be the end of us, my poor children!"
Then, addressing her companions, she said—
"It is for my sake you are in this terrible situation!"
Whilst these things were going on above, the ladies Duguigny had displayed great nerve and, although kept in sight by the soldiers, they had sat down to table, inviting Madame Charette and Mademoiselle Céleste de Kersabiec to do the same. Two other women were even more particularly the objects of surveillance on the part of the police: these were the lady's-maid, Charlotte Moreau, whom Deutz had pointed out as very devoted to the duchess's interests, and the cook, Marie Bossy. The latter was taken to the château and from there to the barracks of the gendarmerie, where, seeing she withstood all threats, they tried bribery: bigger and bigger sums were successively offered her, but she persisted that she did not know where the Duchesse de Berry was. As for Baroness Charette, she was first of all mistaken for one of the Kersabiec ladies, and taken after the dinner with her supposed sister to the latter's house, which is thirty or forty yards higher up the same street.
Well, after fruitless searchings through half the night, they began to slacken their efforts; they thought the duchess had escaped, and two or three other useless descents attempted in other localities seemed to point to the same conclusion. The préfet, therefore, gave the signal for a retreat, leaving a sufficient number of men to occupy every room in the house, out of precaution, whilst police agents established themselves on the ground floor; the surrounding of the house was continued and the National Guard came to relieve half the troops of the line whilst they took a little rest. This distribution of sentinels left two gendarmes in the attic which contained the hiding-place; the hiders were, therefore, obliged to keep motionless, fatiguing as was the position for four persons crowded into a space three and a half feet long by eighteen inches wide at one end and eight to ten inches at the other. The men experienced one more discomfort still, the place was narrower in the highest part, thus leaving them scarcely room to stand upright, even if they put their heads among the rafters; in addition to this, it was a damp night and the fog filtered in through the slates and on the prisoners; but no one dared complain, as the princess did not do so. The cold was so keen that the gendarmes who were in the room could not stand it; one of them went downstairs and came back with some blocks of peat and, ten minutes later, a magnificent fire was blazing in the fireplace against the door behind which the duchess was concealed. This fire, which was only lit for the benefit of two persons, was soon of advantage to six; and, frozen as they were, the prisoners at first congratulated themselves; but the comfort the fire brought soon changed to insufferable discomfort: the door and the wall of the chimney-place, becoming warm, communicated an ever increasing heat to the little retreat; soon the wall was so hot they could not bear to touch it, and the door became red-hot at the same time; furthermore, although it was not yet dawn, the work of the searchers began again; iron bars and planks of wood struck the wall of the hiding-place with redoubled blows till it shook; it seemed to the prisoners as though they were knocking down the maison Duguigny and the neighbouring houses. The duchess had then no other chance of hope; if she withstood the flames, she would be crushed beneath the ruins. Still, her courage and cheerfulness never left her through it all, and several times, as she has since told, she could not keep herself from laughing at the free soldierly conversation of the two guardian gendarmes; one of them made a hint that was more than slight upon the effect produced by camp—beds; the duchess made a mental note of this suggestion, and we shall see with what result. But the conversation soon dragged; one of the gendarmes was asleep, in spite of the fearful din they were making close to him in the next houses; for, for the twentieth time, the search was concentrated round their hiding-place. His companion, warmed for the moment, had ceased attending to the fire and the door and wall grew cold again. M. de Ménars had managed to loosen several slates from the roof and the outer air had freshened the internal atmosphere. All fears turned on the demolishers; they hammered on the wall next the prisoners with great blows and against a cupboard near the fireplace; at each blow the plaster was loosened and fell in dust inside; at last, they thought they were lost, but the workman left that part of the house which, from the instinct of destroyers, they had explored very minutely. The prisoners breathed again and the duchess thought she was saved. But that hope did not last long.
The gendarme who kept watch, seeing the noise had definitely stopped and wishing to take advantage of the moment of silence, shook his comrade so that he could have his turn of sleep. The other had grown cold during his sleep and woke up frozen. He had hardly opened his eyes before he set to work to get himself warm again: consequently, he relit the fire and, as the peat did not burn up fast enough, he used a huge bundle of Quotidienne newspapers which had been thrown under the table in the room to light up the fire, which again sparkled in the fireplace. The fire produced by the papers gave out a thick smoke and a more lively heat than the peat had done the first time. Hence arose now a very real danger to the prisoners. The smoke penetrated through the cracks in the chimney-wall, which had been shaken by the hammerings, and the door, which was not yet cold, was soon as red-hot as a forge. The air of the hiding-place became less and less fit to breathe; those inside were obliged to put their mouths to the cracks between the slates in order to breathe the fresh air in place of the fiery air inside. The duchess suffered the most, for, having been the last to enter, she had to lean against the door. Each of her companions offered repeatedly to change places with her, but she would not consent. Meanwhile, to the danger of being suffocated was added a new one, that of being burned alive. The door, as we have said, was red-hot and the bottom of the ladies' clothing threatened to catch fire. Already, two or three times the fire had caught the duchess's dress and she had put it out with her hands, burning them so that for a long time after she bore the marks of the bums. Every minute the air inside became rarer and the outer air which came through the holes in the roof was too small in quantity to refresh it. The prisoners grew more and more stifled. To remain ten minutes longer in that furnace would be to endanger the duchess's life. Each of them begged her to go out, but she alone did not wish to do so. Great tears of anger rolled down from her eyes and were dried on her eyelids by the hot air. The fire again burnt her dress and again she extinguished it. But the movement she made in getting up lifted the latch of the door and it opened a little way. Mlle. de Kersabiec at once put out her hand to draw it back into its place and burnt herself very severely. The movement of the door had rolled away the turfs leant against it, and had roused the attention of the gendarme, who was relieving his boredom by reading the Quotidienne, and who thought he had built up his pyrotechnic edifice with great firmness. The sound produced by Mlle. de Kersabiec's efforts caused a strange notion to spring into his head: he imagined there were rats in the chimney and, thinking the heat was going to compel them to come out, he awoke his comrade and both put themselves in readiness to give chase to them with their sabres. All this time the heat and smoke were increasing the tortures of the prisoners more and more. The door moved and one of the gendarmes said, "Who is there?" Mlle. Stylite replied—
"We will give ourselves up: we are going to open the door; take away the fire."
The two men sprang to the fire which they at once kicked aside. The duchess came out first; she was obliged to put her feet and hands on the burning hearth; her companions followed her. It has half-past nine in the morning, and for sixteen hours they had been shut up in the hiding-place without any food.