"After many applications a little new linen was obtained; but the sempstress having marked it with crowns, the municipal officers insisted on the princesses picking the marks _out_, and they were forced to obey. "_Dec. 7._--An officer, at the head of a deputation from the commune, came to the king and read a decree, ordering that the persons in confinement should be deprived of all scissors, razors, knives--instruments usually taken from criminals; and that the strictest search should be made for the same, as well on their persons as in their apartments. The king took out of his pocket a knife and a small morocco pocket-book, from which he gave the pen-knife and scissors. The officer searched every corner of the apartments, and carried off the razors, the curling-irons, the powder-scraper, instruments for the teeth, and many articles of gold and silver. They took away from the princesses their knitting-needles and all the little articles they used for their embroidery. The unhappy queen and princesses were the more sensible of the loss of the little instruments taken from them, as they were in consequence forced to give up all the feminine handiworks which till then had served to beguile prison hours. At this time the king's coat became ragged, and as the Princess Elizabeth, his sister, was mending it, as she had no scissors, the king observed that she had to bite off the thread with her teeth--'What a reverse!' said the king, looking tenderly upon her; 'you were in want of nothing at your pretty house at Montreuil.' 'Ah, brother!' she replied, 'can I feel a regret of any kind while I share your misfortunes?'" The Empress Josephine is said to have played and sung with exquisite feeling: her dancing is said to have been perfect. She exercised her pencil, and--though such be not now antiquated for an _elegante_--her needle and embroidery-frame, with beautiful address. Towards the close of her eventful career, when, after her divorce from Bonaparte, she kept a sort of domestic court at Navarre or Malmaison, she and her ladies worked daily at tapestry or embroidery--one reading aloud whilst the others were thus occupied; and the hangings of the saloon at Malmaison were entirely her own work. They must have been elegant; the material was white silk, the embroidery roses, in which at intervals were entwined her own initials. An interesting circumstance is related of a conversation between one of those ministering spirits a _soeur de la charite_ and Josephine, in a time of peculiar excitement and trouble. At the conclusion of it, the _soeur_, having discovered with whom she was conversing, added, "Since I am addressing the mother of the afflicted, I no longer fear my being indiscreet in any demand I may make for suffering humanity. We are in great want of lint; if your majesty would condescend"----"I promise you shall have some; we will make it ourselves."