The Princess resumed her embroidery; when I finished reading, she said to me:
"Madame la Duchesse de Berry does well to rely on me; that's quite right, Monsieur de Chateaubriand, quite right: I am very sorry for my sister-in-law, you must tell her so."
This persistency on the part of Madame la Dauphine in saying that she was sorry for Madame la Duchesse de Berry, without going further, showed me how little sympathy there was, at bottom, between those two souls. It also seemed to me as though an involuntary impulse had stirred the saint's heart. A rivalry in misfortune! Nevertheless, the daughter of Marie-Antoinette had nothing to fear in this struggle; the palm would have remained hers.
"If Madame," I resumed, "would like to read the letter which Madame la Duchesse de Berry sends her and that which she addresses to her children, she will perhaps find some new explanations there. I hope that Madame will give me a letter to take back to Blaye."
A question of invisible ink.
The letters were written in invisible ink.
"I don't understand this at all," said the Princess. "What are we to do?"
I suggested the expedient of a chafing-dish with a few sticks of white wood; Madame pulled the bell, the rope of which hung down behind the sofa. A footman came, took the order and set up the apparatus on the landing, at the door of the drawing-room. Madame rose and we went to the chafing-dish. We put it on a little table standing against the stair-rail. I took one of the two letters and held it parallel to the flame. Madame la Dauphine watched me, and smiled because I did not succeed. She said:
"Give it to me, give it to me, let me try my hand."
She passed the letter over the flame; Madame la Duchesse de Berry's large, round hand-writing appeared: the same operation was performed for the second letter. I congratulated Madame on her success. It was a strange scene: the daughter of Louis XVI. deciphering with me, at the top of a stair-case at Carlsbad, the mysterious characters which the captive of Blaye was sending to the captive of the Temple!