room were placed as many beds as could stand, which were removed during the day. Refectory, cloisters, and outhouses were also crowded with beds. The cemetery was turned into a promenade for the prisoners, the tombstones being laid flat or carried away. All their rents being stopped, the nuns for the last three months of 1793 had to live on the small sum in hand, barely sufficient to keep them alive. Their papers were catalogued in a sarcastic style by a revolutionary commissary. One of the nuns had been in the habit of complaining to the chaplain, Naylor, of real or imaginary unkindness from the abbess or sisters, and these letters were inventoried as "squabbles of conventual life," "mystical extravagances," &c. The poor nuns must have shivered at the thought that all their documents, from religious correspondence down to recipes for making snuff, were overhauled by scoffing sans-culottes. Their library of a thousand volumes was dispersed. The Girondin deputies, indeed, after being huddled with criminals at the Madelonnettes, found the nunnery clean, spacious, and airy, with an agreeable prospect and a delicious promenade, the only drawback being that the female prisoners had had to be crowded to make room for them, yet according to Foignet, study was impossible and even conversation dangerous, it being construed as conspiracy.
In July 1794, the nuns were removed by night
