“While in prison, my mother received touching marks of sympathy. She was often watched by friendly National Guards, who would ask to be employed on that duty in order to prevent its being entrusted to evil-disposed keepers. She sometimes received accounts of my brother, who still remained in the same place of refuge; and of me, for she had thought fit to have me also concealed at a few leagues from Chavaniac. “At this time public affairs were most inauspicious. All honest officials took favorable opportunities for resigning, and were replaced by Jacobins. We learnt that my father, instead of being set free, had been delivered up by the coalition to the king of Prussia, and was on his way to Spandau. The impression produced on my mother by this news was dreadful. She was in despair at having given her parole to stay at Chavaniac; for notwithstanding the impossibility of leaving France, she could not bear the thoughts of pledging her word to give up seeking every means of rejoining my father. “M. Roland’s answer came at the end of September. He allowed my mother to return to Chavaniac, a prisoner on parole, under the responsibility of the ‘administration.’ My mother thus received the permission she had asked for at the precise moment when she was struck with dismay by the situation my father was in, and by the dangers he was running now at the hands of foreign powers, as lately at those of the revolutionists at home. “The ‘Département’ decided that the _commune_ would each day supply six men to guard my mother, who went to the assembly-room immediately on hearing of this resolution. “‘I here declare, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘that I will not give the parole I offered if guards are to be placed at my door. “‘Choose between these two securities. I cannot be offended by your not trusting me, for my husband has given still better proofs of his patriotism than I have of my honesty; but you will allow me to believe in my own integrity, and not to add bayonets to my parole.’ “It was decided that no guard should be set, and that the municipality would every fortnight report my mother’s presence at Chavaniac. My mother, on learning that M. Roland had expressed his disapprobation of the massacres of September, and that he alone could free her from the engagement she had contracted decided, notwithstanding her reluctance, on writing to him the following letter:—