But to return to the twelve hapless councillors, whom we left staring blankly at each other in the Innsbruck Diet Hall. Two of their number--the very same who had had the honor of receiving the princess on her arrival in the town--were sent off to seek an interview with her mother. "They found her," as they state in one of the minutes, "bathed in tears, but quite willing and prepared to give them all the information she could respecting the mysterious and most deplorable flight of her daughter, of which, so she assured us, she had known absolutely nothing." Her words, confirmed by her tears, at first found ready credence with her gullible visitors. Later on they asked themselves, "If she really did not know anything of the flight, why did she not inform us at once?" and some revulsion in their feelings accordingly took place. The princess-mother then handed to the deputies a letter which "she had found on her daughter's dressing-table on the morning of her flight." In this letter, the original of which is before us, Princess Clementina informs her mother, whom she addresses as "Your Royal Highness," that the day before she had received two letters--one from her father, and the other from her husband the king, in which they both begged her to entrust herself to the care of certain persons who would be sent to take her away as speedily as possible. High-flown passages, breathing the deepest regret for the step she is about to take without her mother's knowledge and consent, intermingled with quite unnatural expressions of humiliation before the august personage of "Madame, my dear mother, Your Royal Highness," make up the rest of this capital sham. From the depositions of the various witnesses examined by the councillors it is easy to fit together the details of this remarkable escape--details which, as we have hinted in the beginning of this paper, differ on important points from the scanty notices on the subject which French and English historians have given us.