Mesdames de France, the two last remaining daughters of Louis XV., arrived in Rome and at once sent for Mme. Le Brun, who was delighted to see them again. They had with great difficulty succeeded in getting away, and had been most anxious to take their niece, Madame Elizabeth, with them. In vain they entreated her to come, she persisted in staying with the King and Queen, and sacrificed her life in so doing.In the latter part of the summer of 1792 she was in Paris, which, in spite of her revolutionary professions, was no safe abode even for her, certainly not for her husband. The slightest sympathy shown to an emigr, a priest, a royalist, or any one marked as a prey by the bloodthirsty monsters who were rapidly showing themselves in their true colours, might be the death-warrant of whoever dared to show it. So would any word or gesture of disapproval of the crimes these miscreants were ordering and perpetrating. Their spies were everywhere, and the least accusation, very often only caused by a private grudge, was enough to bring a person, and perhaps their whole family, to prison and the scaffold. In the early days of the Terror, the well-known actor Talma, hearing an acquaintance named Alexandre, a member of his own profession, giving vent in a benign voice to the most atrocious language of the Terrorists, indignantly reproached him.
Director
The Duc de Montpensier came to Tournay to see his brother and sister and then left for Nice.In the Memoirs of Louis XVIII, he remarks, after the dismissal of Necker: A report was spread that the Queen and the Comte dArtois had given orders for a general massacre, to include the Duke of Orlans, M. Necker, and most of the members of the National Assembly. Sillery, Latouche, Laclos, Voidel, Ducrest, [123] Camille Desmoulin, and all those who came from the Duc dOrlans, were the first to spread these lies. [124][31]You wouldnt believe, she said to Lisette, who came to see her at eight oclock one evening, and found her alone, that I have had twenty people to [153] dinner to-day? They all went away directly after the coffee.