The 9th Thermidor arrives and throws the dictator down from his pedestal, thereby proclaiming the end of his reign of terror. General Barras, invested with the command of the armed forces within the city, begins to take an important part in the management of affairs. One of his first acts, it will be remembered, after he had triumphed over Robespierre’s party, was to go to the prison of the Temple, on July the 28th, accompanied by his brilliant staff, bedecked with gold. The miserable aspect of the child after being shut up for months caused the general to take immediate steps, and by his order of July 29, 1794, a special guardian, chosen by himself, named Laurent, a native of Martinique, was brought to the prison, there to be entrusted with the sole care for nearly five months of the young Capet. A careful study of the documents bearing upon this period of the captivity of the Dauphin makes it quite clear that in the hands of his new guardian he was looked after in a fashion which contrasted strongly with the previous neglect, and that he soon became attached to Laurent, who proved himself good-natured, kind, and even affectionate in his attitude towards his charge. If strange things came about in the Temple at that time, we may be certain that Laurent knew about them, and we may assume that Barras was the prime mover in all that happened. It is impossible, as we have said before, to recapitulate all the arguments which tend to bring home to the general some complicity in the fate of Louis XVII., and which implicate a large number of persons, most of them people of influence in the world of the Convention. Other writers, notably M. Henri Provins,[73] have done this so conscientiously and thoroughly that there is no need for us to attempt it. We may content ourselves with making public a series of documents and newly ascertained matters, the gist of which bears out exactly all that we knew already of Laurent’s conduct at the Temple. Lady Atkyns and her friends could not have done without him. It is true that his name never appears in their communications, for reasons already given, but the striking connection between the events within the prison walls and their effects in London upon the Royalist Committee proves beyond doubt the relations subsisting between them. Between the lines of these documents we get to understand what Cormier meant by “new combinations.” Lady Atkyns has been at pains to say it herself in one of her notes which she used to make upon her correspondence, and which often serve to explain her actions.