Produced by David Widger
Being the Historic Memoirs of Madam Campan,
First Lady in Waiting to the Queen
The Queen having been robbed of her purse as she was passing from theTuileries to the Feuillans, requested my sister to lend her twenty-fivelouis.
[On being interrogated the Queen declared that these five and twenty louishad been lent to her by my sister; this formed a pretence for arrestingher and me, and led to her death.—MADAME CAMPAN.]
I spent part of the day at the Feuillans, and her Majesty told me shewould ask Potion to let me be with her in the place which the Assemblyshould decree for her prison. I then returned home to prepare everythingthat might be necessary for me to accompany her.
On the same day (11th August), at nine in the evening, I returned to theFeuillans. I found there were orders at all the gates forbidding my beingadmitted. I claimed a right to enter by virtue of the first permissionwhich had been given to me; I was again refused. I was told that theQueen had as many people as were requisite about her. My sister was withher, as well as one of my companions, who came out of the prisons of theAbbaye on the 11th. I renewed my solicitations on the 12th; my tears andentreaties moved neither the keepers of the gates, nor even a deputy, towhom I addressed myself.
I soon heard of the removal of Louis XVI. and his family to the Temple. Iwent to Potion accompanied by M. Valadon, for whom I had procured a placein the post-office, and who was devoted to me. He determined to go up toPotion alone; he told him that those who requested to be confined couldnot be suspected of evil designs, and that no political opinion couldafford a ground of objection to these solicitations. Seeing that thewell-meaning man did not succeed, I thought to do more in person; butPetion persisted in his refusal, and threatened to send me to La Force.Thinking to give me a kind of consolation, he added I might be certainthat all those who were then with Louis XVI. and his family would not staywith them long. And in fact, two or three days afterwards the Princessede Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, her daughter, the Queen's first woman, thefirst woman of the Dauphin and of Madame, M. de Chamilly, and M. de Huewere carried off during the night and transferred to La Force. After thedeparture of the King and Queen for the Temple, my sister was detained aprisoner in the apartments their Majesties had quitted for twenty-fourhours.
From this time I was reduced to the misery of having no furtherintelligence of my august and unfortunate mistress but through the mediumof the newspapers or the National Guard, who did duty at the Temple.
The King and Queen said nothing to me at the Feuillans about the portfoliowhich had been deposited with me; no doubt they expected to see me again.The minister Roland and the deputies composing the provisional governmentwere very intent on a search for papers belonging to their Majesties.They had the whole of the Tuileries ransacked. The infamous Robespierrebethought himself of M. Campan, the Queen's private secretary, and saidthat his death was feigned; that he was living unknown in some obscurepart of France, and was doubtless the depositary of all the importantpapers. In a great portfolio belonging to the King there had been found asolitary letter from the Comte d'Artois, which, by its date, and thesubjects of which it treated, indicated the existence of a continuedcorre