Once the queen ventured to ask a town officer where he came from.
"I belong to the country," he loftily replied, "at least, as much of it as your foreign friends have not taken possession of."
One day a municipal officer said to Clery, loud enough for the king to overhear: "I would guillotine the lot of them if the regular executioner backed out."
The sentinels decked the walls, where the royals came along to go into the garden, with lines in this style: "The guillotine is a standing institution and is waiting for the tyrant Louis."—"Madame Veto will soon dance on nothing."—"The fat hog must be put on short rations."—"Pull off the red ribbon he wears—it will do to strangle his cubs with."
One drawing represented a man hanging, and was labeled: "Louis taking an air-bath."
The worst tormentors were two lodgers in the temple, Rocher, the sapper, and Simon, the notorious cobbler. The latter, whose harsh treatment of the royal child has made him noted, was insult personified. Every time he saw the prisoners, it was to inflict a fresh outrage.
Rocher was the man whom we saw take up the dauphin when Charny fell, and carry him into the House; yet he, placed by Manuel to prevent harm befalling the captives, resembled those boys who are given a bird to keep—they kill time by plucking out the feathers one by one.
But, however unhappy the prisoners were, they had yet the comfort that they were under the same roof.
The Commune resolved to part the king from his family.
Clery had an inkling of the intention, but he could not get at the exact date until a general searching of the prisoners on the twenty-ninth of September gave him a hint. That night, indeed, they took away the king into rooms in the great tower which were wet with plaster and paint and the smell was unbearable.