Here for two long, weary months the poor queen lingered; her misery being slightly alleviated by the kind-heartedness of Madame Richard, the wife of the jailer, and Rosalie Lamorlière, an inmate of the prison, who did all the rigorous rules allowed them to mitigate her woes. “The night of her arrival at the Conciergerie the queen had not so much as a change of linen. For days she begged to be allowed some, but it was not till the tenth day that her prayer was granted, when Michonis went to the Temple and brought back with him a parcel of linen and some clothes; among others, the white gown which the queen wore on the day of her execution. Little by little everything was taken from the queen. The souvenirs of her happy past, to which she clung, were taken from her; first her watch, a gift of her mother’s, and which had never left her since she left Vienna,—the watch which had counted the happy hours of her youth and womanhood was taken from her. Bitterly she wept at having to part with it, as if it had been a friend. There was not a moment that the queen could be out of sight of her _gens d’armes_; a little screen, four feet high, was the only separation between the space in which she changed her dress and those men.” Imagine the misery of this state for a woman so delicately nurtured, so luxuriously brought up, having at her command a household of over four hundred persons, and accustomed to the refinements of the most polished court in Europe. In the old days of splendor at Versailles, when her attendants were unable to find some article of dress or toilet, she had exclaimed pettishly: “How _terrible_ it is not to be able to find what one wants!” But now, in these last days of her life, when surrounded by every aggravation that could wound a proud spirit, treated like the worst of offenders, insulted as mother, wife, queen, and woman, she never uttered one word that could be construed into petulance, or gave one angry look. “With threads taken from her bedding, she worked a kind of garter, and not being allowed any knitting-needles, used a pair of toothpicks. When finished, she dropped it, with a significant look, when her jailer entered the prison. It reached—thanks to one of her loyalest followers, M. Hue, a faithful servant of Louis XVI.—its destination, for he gave it to Madame Royale when he accompanied her, two years later, to Vienna.” This was the richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the queen of France could bequeath to her child. The queen was not so fortunate with another little relic that she hoped her daughter would receive. This consisted of a pair of gloves and a lock of her hair, which she slipped into the jailer’s hand; but the action was observed by one of the _gens d’armes_, and the little parcel was confiscated. “The damp of the queen’s underground prison was such that her black gown began to fall into rags. She had another,—a white one; but this she wore only on the day of her death.