"Notwithstanding the actual difference in our positions, a volcano is under your feet, madame, as you know. I knew your alarm—your very natural alarm—at a period when I was in safety, and I was not insensible to it. God alone knows what He destines for us, and perhaps you will one day thank me for having had confidence in your goodness, and for having given you an opportunity of exerting it in behalf of my unfortunate friends. Rely on my gratitude. I wish you happiness, madame, for I think too highly of you to believe it possible that you can be happy in your present situation. Marie Caroline."
The letter returned.
This letter was conveyed to the queen at St. Cloud. She probably read it; but it was immediately returned to the bearer, who was in waiting, with the declaration that the queen could not receive it. Five months had now elapsed since the duchess entered Nantes. It is by some supposed that Louis Philippe did not wish to have her arrested. He would be fearfully embarrassed to know what to do with her. It would hardly do to restore her to liberty while her partisans were cruelly punished with death. It was not easy to decide upon the tribunal which would sit in judgment upon her. The peerage would have recoiled with horror from passing judgment upon a princess, who endeavored to gain the throne for a child, who was entitled to that throne by the avowed principles of legitimacy.
A renegade Jew, by the name of Deutz, at length betrayed her. By the most villainous treachery he obtained an interview with the duchess, and then informed the police of the place of her retreat. It was the 6th of November. In the following words Louis Blanc describes the preparations made for her arrest:
Note from Louis Blanc.
The traitor Deutz.
"The first communication between M. Thiers and Deutz took place under the following circumstances: M. Thiers one day received a letter wherein a stranger begged him to repair in the evening to the Champs Elysées, promising to make him a communication of the very highest importance. At the appointed hour he proceeded to the Champs Elysées, with a brace of pistols ready in his coat-pockets. At the spot indicated in the letter he perceived a man standing, who seemed agitated with fear and doubt. He approached and accosted this man. It was Deutz. A conference was opened, which ended in a base crime. The next night, by an arrangement of the police, Deutz was introduced into the office of the Minister of the Interior. 'You can make a good thing of this,' said M. Thiers. The Jew shook with agitation at the idea; his limbs trembled under him, and his countenance changed. The price of the treachery was settled without difficulty."
No sooner had Deutz withdrawn than bayonets glittered in every direction, and commissioners of police rushed into the house, with pistols in their hands. The duchess had barely time to take refuge, with three companions, in a small recess behind the fire-place, which was adroitly concealed by an iron plate back of the chimney. The police commenced a minute search, calling masons in to aid them. The walls were sounded with hammers, articles of furniture moved and broken open. Night came while the search continued. The space in which they were confined was very narrow, with but one small aperture for the admission of air. They barely escaped suffocation by applying their mouths in turn to this hole, but three inches in diameter.
Discovery and arrest.
The gendarmes, fully satisfied that the duchess must be concealed somewhere in the house, took possession of the room and lighted a fire in the chimney, which converted their hiding-place into a hot oven. The heat soon became insupportable. The iron plate had become red-hot. One of the prisoners kicked it down, and said, "We are coming out; take away the fire." The fire was instantly brushed away, and the duchess and her companions, after having endured sixteen hours of almost insupportable torture, came forth in great exhaustion, and yet the duchess almost gayly said, referring to the ancient martyr roasted upon a gridiron,