aid him according to the rate given to the best
Paris physicians, and I requested him to visit us every morning and every
evening. I took the precaution to subscribe to no other newspaper than
the Moniteur. Doctor Monestier (for that was the physician's name)
frequently took upon himself to read it to us. Whenever he thought proper
to speak of the King and Queen in the insulting and brutal terms at that
time unfortunately adopted throughout France, I used to stop him and say,
coolly, "Monsieur, you are here in company with the servants of Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette. Whatever may be the wrongs with which the nation
believes it has to reproach them, our principles forbid our losing sight
of the respect due to them from us." Notwithstanding that he was an
inveterate patriot, he felt the force of this remark, and even procured
the revocation of a second order for our arrest, becoming responsible for
us to the committee of the Assembly, and to the Jacobin society.
The two chief women about the Dauphin, who had accompanied the Queen to
Varennes, Diet, her usher, and Camot, her garcon de toilette,--the women
on account of the journey, and the men in consequence of the denunciation
of the woman belonging to the wardrobe,--were sent to the prisons of the
Abbaye. After my departure the garcon de toilette whom I had taken to
Madame Vallayer Coster's was sent there with the portfolio she had agreed
to receive. This commission could not escape the detestable spy upon the
Queen. She gave information that a portfolio had been carried out on the
evening of the departure, adding that the King had placed it upon the
Queen's easy-chair, that the garcon de toilette wrapped it up in a napkin
and took it under his arm, and that she did not know where he had carried
it. The man, who was remarkable for his fidelity, underwent three
examinations without making the slightest disclosure. M. Diet, a man of
good family, a servant on whom the Queen placed particular reliance,
likewise experienced the severest treatment. At length, after a lapse of
three weeks, the Queen succeeded in obtaining the release of her servants.
The Queen, about the 15th of August, had me informed by letter that I
might come back to Paris without being under any apprehension of arrest
there, and that she greatly desired my return. I brought my father-in-law
back in a dying state, and on the day preceding that of the acceptation of
the constitutional act, I
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