s attracted to
the queen by her misfortunes, and became her most intimate and devoted
friend. She lodged in an apartment adjoining to the queen's, that she
might share all her perils. Occasionally the princess was absent to
watch over and cheer an aged friend, the Duke de Penthievre, her
father-in-law, who resided at the Chateau de Vernon. She had gone a
short time before the 20th of June to visit the aged duke, and Maria
Antoinette, who foresaw the terrible storm about to burst upon them,
wrote the following touching letter to her friend, urging her not to
return to the sufferings and dangers of the Tuileries. The letter was
found in the hair of the Princess de Lamballe after her assassination.

"Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are
perfectly recovered. The good Duke de Penthievre would be
sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his
advanced age and respect his virtues. I have so often told
you to take heed of yourself, that, if you love me, you
must think of yourself; we shall require all of our strength
in the times in which we live. Oh! do not return, or return
as late as possible. Your heart would be too deeply
wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my
misfortunes--you, who loved me so tenderly. This race of
tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself
if it knew all the sufferings we undergo. Adieu, my dear
Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never
change."

The princess, notwithstanding this advice, hastened to join her friend
and to share her fate. She stood by the side of the queen during the
sleeplessness of the night preceding the 20th of June, and clung to her
during all those long and terrific hours in which the mob filled her
apartment with language of obscenity, menace, and rage. She accompanied
the royal family to the Assembly, shared with them the cheerless night
in the old monastery of the Feuillants, and followed them to the gloomy
prison of the Temple. The stern decree of the Assembly, depriving the
royal family of the presence of any of their friends, excluded the
princess from the prison. She still, however, lived but to weep over the
sorrows of those whom she so tenderly loved.

She was soon arrested as a Loyalist, and plunged, like the vilest
criminal, into the prison of La Force. For the crime of loving the king
and queen she was summoned to appear b