“My mother passed forty days at La Force and Le Plesis, expecting death at every moment. In the midst of the tumult caused by the revolution of the 10th _Thermidor_, it was for a moment believed that fresh massacres would take place in the prisons; but soon afterward the news of Robespierre’s death reached the captives, and it became known to them that the executions of the Revolutionary Tribunal had ceased. My mother’s first thought was to send to the Luxembourg. The jailer’s answer revealed to her the fearful truth. My grandmother, with my aunt de Noailles and the Maréchale de Noailles had been sent to the scaffold on the 4th _Thermidor_: the three generations perished together. How can I give you an idea of my mother’s despair? ‘Return thanks to God,’ she wrote to us later, ‘for having preserved my strength, my life, my reason; do not regret that you were far from me. God kept me from revolting against Him, but for a long time I could not have borne the slightest appearance of human comfort.’” [Illustration: BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.] Madame La Fayette in her “Life of the Duchesse d’Ayen” gives the following interesting though painful particulars regarding the execution of her mother, grandmother, and sister:— “My mother and my sister were put under arrest in the first days of October, but allowed to remain well guarded at the Hôtel de Noailles. A month later I myself was taken as a prisoner to Brioude, and it became still more difficult to correspond. “Persecutions went on increasing. One day the _detenus_ had to answer questions on their actions and on their thoughts. My mother and my sister were prepared, and answered those who questioned them with their usual tact and straightforwardness. The inventory of all that was in their possession was drawn up. My mother, fearing she might be made to swear that she had concealed nothing, had hung to her side, in the shape of a watch chain, all the diamonds which were left her. They were not taken; she sold them that same day to a jeweller, who gave her immediately the money she required to pay the small debts which were owing, but she never received the full amount of what was due her, the jeweller having been beheaded on the following day.