The reign of terror had begun. A decree was passed to bring the twenty-two accused deputies to trial. Her prison became filled with her friends, and, as one after the other they were led to the guillotine, they were replaced by fresh victims. She made some struggles, by letters to men in power, to be liberated, since, as yet, she was accused of no crime: these failing, she meditated suicide. At the beginning of October she writes, in the journal of her last thoughts, "Two months ago I aspired to the honour of ascending the scaffold. Victims were still allowed to speak, and the energy of great courage might have been of service to truth. Now all is lost: to live is basely to submit to a ferocious rule, and to give it the opportunity of committing fresh atrocities." She bade adieu to her husband, her child, her faithful servant, her friends; to the sun, to the solitary country where she had lived in peace, to hours of meditation and serene thoughts; and she exclaims, "God! supreme being! soul of the world! source of all I feel of great, good, and happy! thou in whose existence I believe, for I must have emanated from something better than what I see, I am about to re-unite myself to thy essence." With these thoughts she wrote directions for the education of her Eudora, and a letter, in which she bids her child "remember her mother." The act of accusation against the chief girondists, among whom she was included, and her expected examination before the revolutionary tribunal, caused her to dismiss this purpose: she hoped to do some good by speaking the truth courageously to her assassins. One after the other, her friends underwent the mockery of a trial, while her turn was delayed from day to day. The tenderness, the greatness of her mind displayed itself in the most touching manner during this suspense. She wrote to her friends, but her thoughts chiefly lingered round her child; and again she wrote to] the person who had the charge of her in few, and simple, but strong words, conceived in all the energy of maternal love. On the 31st of October, the day of the execution of her revered friend Brissot, she was transferred to the _conciergerie_, and placed in a squalid cell amidst all the filth of a crowded prison. Her examination took place on the following day, and continued for several days after. Her crime was her intercourse with her friends, the deputies of the gironde, now proscribed. She was scarcely permitted to answer, but her courage enforced attention. She was bid choose an advocate for her trial: she named Marceau, and retired with serene and even cheerful dignity, saying to her accusers, "I wish, in return for all the ill you bring on me, peace equal to that which I preserve, whatever may be the value attached to it."