Madame Royale’s health did not sink under these accumulated sorrows, heavy and bitter though they were. Hué, her father’s faithful attendant, writes of her:—“She had attained an age in which sorrows are keenly felt, but had learned by great examples to show herself superior to adversity. Left entirely by herself in the Tower of the Temple, God being her only adviser and support, she increased in grace and virtue, and grew like the lily which the tempest spared.” The loving foresight of her aunt doubtless contributed in great measure to the preservation of her health. She had planned out the days for her, appointing set times for prayer, reading, work, and the care of her room. She had taught her to do everything for herself, showed her how to freshen the air of the room by sprinkling water, and had made her take regular exercise by walking rapidly, watch in hand, for an hour at a time. She saw no one except the municipal officers, who continued to search her room at frequent intervals, and the persons who brought her meals. To the latter she never spoke; to the former only to answer briefly a direct question. Madame Elizabeth had impressed on her that if ever she were left alone, she should immediately ask to have a woman to live with her. She felt obliged to obey her aunt’s wish, but feared that if her request were granted, some uncongenial person would be given her for a companion. It was, however, refused, and the princess confesses that she was very glad. So the long summer days passed away, and the autumn came and went. Day followed day in a dreary sameness of solitude. The Princess of France grew to be thankful for very small mercies. “I continued at least to keep myself clean,” she writes. “I had soap and water, and I swept my room every day.... I was not allowed any light; but in the long days I did not much feel this privation. They refused to give me any other books; those I had were books of piety and travels, which I had read over and over a thousand times. I also had a knitting machine, of which I was completely tired.” The appointment of a fresh commissary of the Convention, named Laurent, to take charge of the princess and her brother, brought some little relief. The unhappy Dauphin, after enduring six months’ brutal treatment from Simon, had been left six months unattended and alone, and was reduced to the last degree of misery. Laurent, who seems to have been a kind-hearted man, did what he could for him, and treated Madame Royale with civility and consideration. She ventured to ask for news of her mother and her aunt, and asked him to use his influence to have her restored to her mother, but “he replied with an evident air of embarrassment and pain, that these were matters with which he had no concern.”