His end is well known: how, having fallen into an ambush, he and six of his companions were shot by Napoleon’s orders, in despite of a safe-conduct with which he was furnished, on February 18, 1800, at Verneuil. If in the course of these five years he did learn the full truth about the Dauphin, he doubtless abstained from any reference to it out of regard for the King. He carried his private convictions in silence to the grave.
The news of his death was received with emotion in London. Peltier, who had had good opportunities for forming an opinion of him, gave out a cry of horror. “This act,” he wrote in his gazette, “covers Bonaparte for ever with shame and infamy.”
The small circle of Lady Atkyns’ London friends lost thus one of its members. Meanwhile, Lady Atkyns had been making the acquaintance of a French woman who had been living in England for some years, and whose feelings corresponded to a remarkable degree with her own. This lady had found a warm welcome at Richmond, near London, on her arrival as an émigré from France.
Pale, thin, anxious-looking, the victim of a sombre sorrow which almost disfigured her face, Louise de Chatillon, Princesse de Tarente, wife of the Duc de la Tremoïlle, had escaped death in a marvellous way. A follower of Marie-Antoinette, from whom she had been separated only by force, she had been arrested on the day after August 10 as having been the friend of the Princesse de Lamballe. Shut up in the sinister prison of l’Abbaye, she had felt that death was close at hand. From her dungeon she could see the men of September at their work and hear the cries of agony given forth by their victims. At last, after ten days of imprisonment, she was liberated, thanks to an unexpected intervention, and in the month of September, 1792, she succeeded in finding a ship to take her to England.
Hers was a strikingly original personality, and it is not without a feeling of surprise that one studies the portrait of her which accompanies the recent work, Souvenirs de la Princesse de Tarente. The drama in which she had taken part, and the bloody spectacle of which she had been a witness, seem to have left their mark on her countenance, with its aspect of embittered sadness. Her eyes give out a look of fierceness. Save for the thin hair partially covering her forehead, there is almost nothing feminine in her face. Seeing her for the first time, Lady Atkyns must have received an impression for which she was unprepared. They took to each other, however, very quickly, having a bond in common in their memories of the Queen. Both had come under the charm of Marie-Antoinette, their devotion to whom was ardent and sincere. The Queen was their one great topic of conversation. Few of their letters lack some allusion to her.
Knowledge of Lady Atkyns’ devotion to the Royal House of France, of the sacrifices she had made, was widespread in the world of English society, and the Princess, having heard of her, was anxious to meet the woman, who, more fortunate than herself, had been able to afford some balm to the sufferings, to prevent which she would so willingly have given her life. The Duke of Queensberry brought about a meeting between the two ladies. What passed between them on this occasion? What questions did they exchange in their eager anxiety to learn something new about the Queen? Doubtless the most eager inquiries came from the Princess, and bore upon the achievements of Lady Atkyns, her visit to the Conciergerie, her talks with the illustrious prisoner. For weeks afterwards there was an interchange of letters between the two, in which is clearly disclosed the state of affectionate anxiety of the Princess’s mind. They address each other already by their Christian names, Louise and Charlotte. Lady Atkyns shows Mme. de Tarente the few souvenirs of the Queen she still possessed, the last lines the Queen wrote to her. It is touching to note, in reading their correspondence, how every day is to them an anniversary of some event in the life of the Queen, full of sweet or anguishing memories.
“How sad I was yesterday!” writes the Princess. “It was the anniversary of a terrible day, when the Queen escaped assassination only by betaking herself to the King’s apartments in the middle of the night. Why did she escape? To know you—but for that the Almighty would surely have been kind enough to her to have let her fall a victim then.”
For all the affection which surrounds her, Mme. de Tarente constantly bemoans her solitude.
“I am in the midst of the world,” she writes, “yet all alone. Yesterday I longed so to talk of that which filled my poor heart, but there was none who would have understood me. So I kept my trouble to myself. I was like one of those figures you wind up which go for a time and then stop again. I kept falling to pieces and pulling myself together again. Ah, how sad life is!”