What are we to think of this confinement? What was the meaning of it? We feel that it is out of the question at this time of day to formulate any clear-cut explanation of it. So great an air of mystery hangs over all that happened in the Temple during this year of 1794 and down to June 8, 1795, that it would be vain to attempt to elucidate this imbroglio of deeds plotted in the dark, and performed by actors each of whom played his part independently of the others. The various personages mixed up in them were so situated that they could not see the goal towards which they were called upon to work. What we desire to do, with the help of the correspondence at our disposal, is to show that Lady Atkyns was the leading spirit of a Royalist Committee, formed for the purpose of securing the Dauphin’s escape, and that not only his escape was practicable, thanks to the intervention of people high in authority--probably of Barras--but that it was, in fact, carried out. A sort of bureau had been instituted at Paris for turning to account the sources of information contrived within the Temple, and for keeping _au courant_ with the prison regulations and the methods adopted for watching over the Royal captive. There was a house in Rue Basse-du-Rempart in which M. Cormier lived formerly, and which, on setting out for La Vendée, he left to the care of his wife.[67] In this house they had a _pied à terre_ ready to their hands, and in Mme. Cormier, _née_ de Butler, a person on whom they could absolutely rely, active-minded, enterprising, the very person of all others to help the projects of the Royalists in London. It is she who, during these first weeks of the year 1794, will be keeping her husband and his friends _au courant_ with all she can find out about the Dauphin and his gaolers, and the way in which he and his now numerous partisans in Paris are kept under watch. It is impossible for her, we may be sure, to correspond direct with London, and we are in the dark as to her methods of communication; but in these days there are any number of couriers carrying news and despatches from the Continent to England. Soon, to avoid suspicion and work in greater safety, Mme. Cormier, henceforth referred to always by her maiden name, will secure a decree of divorce from her husband on the ground that he is _émigré_, thus apparently breaking up all connection with the former president of the Club Massiac.[68] Had she not had her name removed already, a year earlier, from the ill-fated list of _émigrés_? It is time for us now to make fuller acquaintance with the members of this circle of intimate friends surrounding Lady Atkyns, and concentrating all their efforts upon the furthering of her plans.