Madame Royale and her aunt were now left alone. Inconsolable at the loss of the Queen, they made constant and urgent inquiries concerning her, and begged earnestly to be reunited to her. They were only told, however, in the vaguest terms that no harm would come to her. In September the rigour of their imprisonment was increased. They were confined to one room, and no longer allowed a servant to do the coarse work. “We made our beds ourselves, and were obliged to sweep the room, which took us a long time to do at first, until we got accustomed to it.” They were not allowed to walk on the Tower, for fear they should attempt to escape, although the windows were all barred. Anything that could tend in any way to their comfort or convenience was taken away. Madame Elizabeth asked for something instead of meat on fast days. She was told that under the new rules of equality there was no difference between the days. When she asked another time, she was told, “No one but fools believe now in all that nonsense.” In spite of these refusals, however, she managed to keep Lent strictly when it came. She took no breakfast, and reserved the coffee then provided for her dinner, while at night she only took bread. She wisely, however, forbade Madame Royale following her example, and urged her to eat whatever was brought, saying she had not yet come to an age which required her to abstain. In the winter evenings she taught her niece tric-trac, which they played together, “as a sort of distraction to our grief.” As the days began to get longer, however, they were not allowed any more candles, and had to go to bed as soon as it was dark.
The beautiful prayer composed by Madame Elizabeth, which the aunt and niece used daily, shows us the pure influence which was helping to mould Madame Royale’s character, and the spirit in which days of dreariness and grief were met and conquered:—
“What may befall me this day, O God! I know not; but I do know that nothing can happen to me which Thou hast not foreseen, ruled, willed, and ordained from all eternity; and that suffices me. I adore Thy eternal and inscrutable designs. I submit to them with all my heart, through love to Thee. I accept all; I make unto Thee a sacrifice of all; and to this poor sacrifice I add that of my Divine Saviour. In His name, and for the sake of His infinite merits, I ask of Thee that I may be endowed with patience under suffering, and with the perfect submission which is due to all which Thou willest or permittest.”
All this time they remained ignorant of the fate of the Queen. They had, indeed, heard the street hawkers crying the sentence of death under their windows; but, though their hearts misgave them at times, they refused to believe that the sentence could have been actually carried out, and so hoped against hope. Whether from callous indifference or because no one had the heart to tell them, the fatal news never reached their ears, and it was eighteen months before Madame Royale knew of her mother’s death.
Thus the days passed until the 9th of May, 1794. The day had been spent as usual, and the prisoners were just going to bed, when loud and continued knocking at the door and demands for immediate admission warned them of some new evil. The summons was for Madame Elizabeth. “Citizen, will you accompany us downstairs?” “And my niece?” “She shall be taken care of afterwards.” Madame Elizabeth embraced her niece, and told her, by way of reassuring her, that she would soon return. “No, citizen,” said the ruffians; “you will not return. Put on your bonnet and go downstairs.” “She bore it all with patience,” says Madame Royale, “put on her bonnet, embraced me once more, and told me to take courage and be firm, to place my hope in God, to live in the good principles of religion which my parents had taught me, and to keep constantly in my mind the last advice of my father and mother. She then departed.”
The young girl of fifteen was thus left, as she herself expresses it, “in an utter state of desolation.” She “passed a cruel night”; but, though filled with fears, she could not believe that serious harm could be intended to one who was so saintly and pure, and who could never be accused of taking any share in the Government or of any political offence. She was told the next day, in answer to her inquiries, that her aunt had been to take the air. She little thought that Madame Elizabeth had even then travelled her last journey and reached her long home.
Madame Royale’s health did not sink under these accumulated sorrows, heavy and bitter though they were. Hué, her father’s faithful attendant, writes of her:—“She had attained an age in which sorrows are keenly felt, but had learned by great examples to show herself superior to adversity. Left entirely by herself in the Tower of the Temple, God being her only adviser and support, she increased in grace and virtue, and grew like the lily which the tempest spared.” The loving foresight of her aunt doubtless contributed in great measure to the preservation of her health. She had planned out the days for her, appointing set times for prayer, reading, work, and the care of her room. She had taught her to do everything for herself, showed her how to freshen the air of the room by sprinkling water, and had made her take regular exercise by walking rapidly, watch in hand, for an hour at a time. She saw no one except the municipal officers, who continued to search her room at frequent intervals, and the persons who brought her meals. To the latter she never spoke; to the former only to answer briefly a direct question. Madame Elizabeth had impressed on her that if ever she were left alone, she should immediately ask to have a woman to live with her. She felt obliged to obey her aunt’s wish, but feared that if her request were granted, some uncongenial person would be given her for a companion. It was, however, refused, and the princess confesses that she was very glad.
So the long summer days passed away, and the autumn came and went. Day followed day in a dreary sameness of solitude. The Princess of France grew to be thankful for very small mercies. “I continued at least to keep myself clean,” she writes. “I had soap and water, and I swept my room every day.... I was not allowed any light; but in the long days I did not much feel this privation. They refused to give me any other books; those I had were books of piety and travels, which I had read over and over a thousand times. I also had a knitting machine, of which I was completely tired.”
The appointment of a fresh commissary of the Convention, named Laurent, to take charge of the princess and her brother, brought some little relief. The unhappy Dauphin, after enduring six months’ brutal treatment from Simon, had been left six months unattended and alone, and was reduced to the last degree of misery. Laurent, who seems to have been a kind-hearted man, did what he could for him, and treated Madame Royale with civility and consideration. She ventured to ask for news of her mother and her aunt, and asked him to use his influence to have her restored to her mother, but “he replied with an evident air of embarrassment and pain, that these were matters with which he had no concern.”
“The winter passed with tolerable tranquillity,” writes the princess, “and I had reason to be satisfied with the civility of my keepers. They offered to make my fire, and allowed me as much wood as I wished, which was a source of great comfort to me. They also brought me the books I asked for; Laurent had already procured me some. The greatest distress I had was in not being able to learn anything respecting my mother or my aunt.”