It was this, dear friends, this omission more than the notebooks themselves which undid me. What lady does not keep correspondence? What traveller does not receive letters from abroad, detailing all the doings of those whom they miss? What person of breeding or rank has not a friend in the world with whom they share their thoughts and secrets? Had I no family, no sweetheart, no parent who cared for me? What, dear reader, would be cause for more suspicion than this? For, although it was the truth, it seemed to them so peculiar as to raise the alarm.

I was taken from my home to the section house. They marched me through the streets at the centre of what seemed an entire battalion of men who had come to search my home. They permitted me to throw no more than a cloak about my shoulders to preserve me from the cold. My head reeled with all that had occurred in those two days. I wondered what would be the consequences of my arrest for the others. I dreaded that it should lead to the exposure of Mrs Elliot and then of Allenham, that these men should unpick the code of my diary and use my innocent scrawls against La Buffon, or even Orléans. I could not fathom what was to become of them or of me. I could not think what stories I should offer in an attempt to plead my innocence.

As I was escorted through the streets I was subjected to the vexatious looks of the people who were my neighbours. They paused to stare and hiss and shout that I was for the guillotine. I recall the cries of one woman, a perfect stranger to me, who stood with her three children and pointed, ‘There, mes petites, there goes an aristocrat whore and a traitor to her death.’

I knew not what the officials proposed for me. I was seated upon a bench in a room with bars upon the door. There was one other prisoner for company, a gentleman quite haggard and in a soiled shirt, who would not look me in the eye, nor address me out of fear. The only warmth came from a low fire which burned in the adjoining guards’ room where my captors played dice, swore, smoked their pipes and taunted me with the grossest insults.

‘Citizen Capet shall lose his head tomorrow,’ they teased. ‘What think you of that, ma jolie?’

‘We shall see if the little royalist weeps for the tyrant!’ another jibbed.

‘I am no lover of the King,’ I protested.

‘Why, ma petite? Would Louis Capet’s cock not crow for you?’ questioned another with a sad moue. With that, they fell about in hilarity. One guard then unbuttoned his white breeches and held out his yard to me.