Frev people looking out for each other while in prison compilation
Moreover, the consequences of oppression have inhabited the corridor where I live with women near whom I can be without shame and even with pleasure. I find there a wife of a justice of the peace to whom her neighbor attributed so-called uncivil remarks; I meet there the wife of the president of the revolutionary tribunal; I see there Madame Pétion. "I hardly believed," I said to her when I approached, "when I was at town hall on August 10 92, sharing your worries, that we would celebrate the anniversary at Sainte-Pélagie, and that the fall of the throne would prepare our disgrace.” Manon Roland in her memoirs, part written in the Saint-Pélagie prison on August 20 1793. Manon got imprisoned in the Sainte-Pélagie prison on 24 June 1793, Suzanne Pétion on 9 August 1793.
…I suffered beyond words for my poor companion (Suzanne Pétion). It was I who took on the sad task of preparing her for the blow she hardly expected and of announcing it to her; I was sure of bringing the softenings that another might have had difficulty finding, because there is hardly anything other than my position that could make me share her pain so well. This circumstance led to her being sent to my place, we eat together, and she likes to spend most of the day near me. I work much less, but I am useful, and this feeling makes me taste a kind of charm that tyrants do not know. […] I gratefully receive Lady B's letters; I do not know them, I intend to have them delivered to two people, I will have the little P(étion) read [them], I only had Thompson which he could not yet understand. Letter from Manon Roland to M. Jany, September 28 1793. Manon is here referring to the death of Suzanne Pétion’s mother, executed on September 24 for ”having made ”counter-revolutionary remarks, tending to the reestablishment of royalty and the debasement of national representation” (Gazette nationale ou le Moniteur universel, number 279 (October 6 1793), p. 1179)
Since our (Ducos and Boyer-Fonfrède) arrest, my sweet friend, we have thought of nothing but you. This shows you that we are little affected by a severity we do not believe we deserve, and that the only thing unbearable about it is the thought of the sorrow it will cause you. If we did not have this worry, I swear to you, my dearest love, we would not be so unhappy. First of all, we are together, we sleep in the same room, our beds are next to each other, and last night we had the pleasure of holding hands, as a sign of our inseparability. Moreover, we communicate with the other prisoners; we have found Clavière, Duprat, Minvielle, Lehardi, and others. We will share a meal, and we will pass the time as peacefully as one can in prison when one is not at peace with the things dearest to one's heart. Jean-François Ducos in a letter to his wife Agathe, written in the Conciergerie prison on 4 October 1793. Cited in Aspects ignorés de la personnalité du Girondin Ducos (1765-1793) d’après vingt lettres inédites écrites à la Conciergerie (1981), page 61. Ducos and Boyer-Fonfrède were brother-in-laws, and were both imprisoned in the Conciergerie the same day this letter was written.
One more word, my friend. Sillery has offered me aid for you, Fauchet, and all my colleagues. Gensonné especially, who, I fear, will share my fate, assures you of his esteem and implores you to become close to his wife and children. You are both worthy of esteem, of being united; she has a soul like yours. Farewell, my dear friend, dry your tears; mine dampen this paper. But our separation will not be eternal. Brissot in his last letter to his wife Félicité, written in the Conciergerie prison on October 30 1793
