Mademoiselle de Pons did not find our fare good enough, and joined with a woman from Beauvais, and two young girls. I enter into minute details which would be very tiresome if this memoir was intended to be read by strangers; but it is for my own relatives that it is written, and I am too sure of the interest they take in what I have suffered to omit to mention the least thing. The rules of our prison were extremely strict. At eight o'clock in the morning the keepers opened the doors; this was a truly agreeable moment,--if I may use such an expression in such a connection; then they wrote our names on the registers, but being so little accustomed to such matters they never made the list as it should be, and so were obliged to have the roll-call two or three times a day. One moment they ordered us to remain inside our rooms, and another we were told to stand like sentinels at our doors. The locking up, and ascertaining that each prisoner was in her place, seemed a more solemn affair. The keeper, followed by the turnkeys, gendarmes, and some large dogs, came about ten o'clock in the evening or at midnight. This goodly company made pleasing jokes and a great deal of noise. I always pretended to be asleep, and made no reply to what they said. It seemed sad that our sleep, which alone had the power to cause us to forget our troubles, should be interrupted by that sound which most quickly recalled them. During the first days after our arrival we spent our time mostly in sending petitions to Fouquier-Tinville, asking to be reunited to our families. We have since learned that not one of them reached him. I eagerly sought for some opportunity of sending or receiving communications from my parents. At last I discovered that in sending some trifling thing to the Luxembourg I could add two or three lines, which at least served to say we were alive. The notes were sent open, and passed through the hands of the registrars and jailers of Plessis and the Luxembourg. I suffered intensely at having to inform my parents that I should not have the consolation of joining them; they tenderly expressed their deep regret for this. The sight of their handwriting, after having been so long deprived of it, moved me profoundly; I received a few words from them every two or three days.