They took a little house in a meadow looking down on the lake, and not even the authorities of the place knew who they were.
Mme. de Genlis, however, found an opportunity of writing to the Duchess of Orléans in France; the Duke was by this time arrested.
Mme. de Genlis declares that at this time the Duchess was still free, and insinuates that she displayed indifference to her daughter in not replying to her letters.
But Louis XVIII. in his Memoirs says:
“A first decree, dated 4 April (1793), ordered the arrest of Madame la Duchesse d’Orléans, that woman, so virtuous, so worthy of a better fate; then of Mme. de Montesson, of Mme. de Valence, daughter of Mme. de Genlis, and her children. A special clause added: The citoyens Égalité and Sillery cannot leave Paris without permission.” [129]
And M. Turquan, [130] in his life of Mme. de Montesson, says:
“Mme. de Montesson was arrested ... in virtue of a decree of the Convention of 4 April, 1793, ... and on the 17th ... was taken to the prison of La Force, from there she was transferred to the Maison d’arrêt Dudreneux, opposite her own hôtel. From the windows of her new prison she had the consolation, if it was one, of contemplating her own garden, into which she could no longer put her foot. She had another, less bitter, her première femme de chambre would not be separated from her, but followed her to prison, and in spite of many obstacles rendered her many services.... This admirable, devoted woman (Mme. Naudet) had left her children to follow her mistress to prison.”
It is therefore evident that at the time of which Mme. de Genlis is writing, the middle of May, the Duchess of Orléans was in prison. Also that the Marquis de Sillery, her husband, had not been detained in the Abbaye, as from his letter she had supposed, but was only under supervision till the 7th of April.