commissary-general of the King's household, and head of the offices of M.
de Laporte, minister of the civil list, came to see me. The palace having
been already sacked by the brigands on the 20th of June, 1792, he proposed
that I should entrust the paper to him, that he might place it in a safer
situation than the apartments of the Queen. When he returned into his
offices he placed the letter she had condescended to write to me behind a
large picture in his closet; but on the loth of August M. de la Chapelle
was thrown into the prisons of the Abbaye, and the committee of public
safety established themselves in his offices, whence they issued all their
decrees of death. There it was that a villainous servant belonging to M.
de Laporte went to declare that in the minister's apartments, under a
board in the floor, a number of papers would be found. They were brought
forth, and M. de Laporte was sent to the scaffold, where he suffered for
having betrayed the State by serving his master and sovereign. M. de la
Chapelle was saved, as if by a miracle, from the massacres of the 2d of
September. The committee of public safety having removed to the King's
apartments at the Tuileries, M. de la Chapelle had permission to return to
his closet to take away some property belonging to him. Turning round the
picture, behind which he had hidden the Queen's letter, he found it in the
place into which he had slipped it, and, delighted to see that I was safe
from the ill consequences the discovery of this paper might have brought
upon me, he burnt it instantly. In times of danger a mere nothing may
save life or destroy it.--MADAME CAMPAN]

At the moment that I was going to express my gratitude to the Queen I
heard a tapping at the door of my room, which opened upon the Queen's
inner corridor. I opened it; it was the King. I was confused; he
perceived it, and said to me, kindly: "I alarm you, Madame Campan; I come,
however, to comfort you; the Queen has told me how much she is hurt at the
injustice of several persons towards you. But how is it that you complain