“I knelt before this tomb,” she writes to Mme. de Verrière, “but I should have preferred to have seen the prison room unaltered, and the tomb placed where the Queen used to kneel down to pray. The place has been made to look too nice, and a simple elegance has been imparted to it which takes away all idea of the misfortunes of that time. I would have left the bed, the table, and the chair. There is a portrait of the Queen seated on the bed, her eyes raised heavenwards with the resignation of a martyr. This portrait is very like, especially the eyes, with that look of angelic sweetness which she had. There is another tomb with a crucifix on it, as on hers, upon which are inscribed the words: ‘_Que mon fils n’oublie jamais les derniers mot de son père, que je lui répète expressément; qu’il ne cherche jamais à venger notre mort_.’ You go in by the chapel, and behind the altar, to get to where the Queen used to be.... I repeated on the tomb what I vowed to the Queen--never to abandon the cause of her children. It is true that only Madame remains now, but she one day will be Queen of France, and if she has need of a faithful friend she will find one in me.” These last lines seem a strange avowal. Lady Atkyns seems to be renouncing her faith. What is the explanation? It is simple enough. She has realized that as long as she puts forward her inopportune plea regarding the child in the Temple she must expect to find nothing but closed doors. Yet she has by her proofs of what she alleges, and she is prepared in substantiation of her memorials to hand over a selection of the precious letters from her friends which she has received in the course of her enterprise. These, doubtless, would be accepted, but would never be given back. What, then, is she to do? Threatened on the one side by the distress which is at her heels; a prey, on the other hand, to her inalterable conviction, the luckless lady comes for a moment to have doubts about her entire past. However, this disavowal, as it seems, is but momentary; a calmer mood supervenes, and she returns to her former point of view, unable ever to free her mind from doubts as to the real fate of the Dauphin. The King’s generosity in this year, 1816, does not appear to have given her much satisfaction. “At last I have received a little money,” she writes to Mme. de Verrière just before Christmas, when preparing to return to England, “but so little that it is really shameful.” The following spring she is back again in France, still carrying on her campaign. From 1817 to 1821 her letters pour in upon the Ministry of the Royal Household. Did they contain indiscreet allusions to the affair of the Temple? Perhaps. In any case, with a single exception, all these letters have disappeared. We find a curious reference to Lady Atkyns in a letter dated January 11, 1818, preserved in the archives of the Comte de Lair--