The commissioner, Grandpré, fearing lest our crowded condition should cause sickness, proposed that we should take the air in the courtyard. We had a great aversion to going down a hundred steps, passing six grated iron doors, preceded, accompanied, and followed by keepers. We refused to do it for some time. Then he told us that if we paid no regard to his request we should be charged with aristocratic opinions; consequently, we were obliged to yield, and take the walk. The place appointed for our promenade was very confined, enclosed by plank fences, and surrounded by gendarmes, who kept their eyes upon us. We found there about twenty women who had come from the Conciergerie, and who were lodged under us without our knowing anything about it. After conversing with them our fears were redoubled; for they gave us a most fearful account of that terrible prison, which has been called the anti-chamber of death. They told us that every day a large number of victims for the scaffold were sent from there, and that our house was considered a sort of annex to the Conciergerie. We were entirely ignorant of what was going on outside our cells. Madame de Vassy, a pupil of J. J. Rousseau, and daughter of Monsieur de Girardin, had induced a jailer named Launay, the best of our keepers, to bring her some newspapers; but this was found out, and was considered an unpardonable crime. He was taken to another prison and put in irons, and but for the death of Robespierre would have perished. This man, who is still living, actually wept when he took us out on our compulsory airing, which rather seemed like leading out a pack of dogs. Rain or shine we were taken out for the prescribed time. If some of us wished to go in sooner than others, we were forbidden to do so, and we were taken out whenever our keepers chose. The men who lodged near the stairway were obliged to retire when we passed in front of their gratings; but their windows looked out upon the space where we were allowed, or rather ordered, to walk, and there they often recognized their wives and children,--all those whom they loved, and of whose very existence they were ignorant. Only prisoners from Chantilly were now lodged on our corridor. Among those who came from the Conciergerie were Mesdames de Grimaldi and de Bussy, from whom we had a full account of all the horrors which were being enacted there. A few days later Madame de Bussy was carried off, to be indicted by the Revolutionary tribunal; but her case was not pressed, and she returned to Plessis. We were just congratulating her on the subject when she was sent for again, and led to the scaffold. She had scarcely gone when the jailers seized upon all her effects, and tried to sell them to us,--an incident which shocked us greatly. We repelled their disgusting proposition with horror.