a passport to England and back in 1813, on the plea of securing an inheritance, and according to her petition to Louis XVIII. after the Restoration, she was entrusted with a mission by royalists who afterwards ignored her claims to gratitude. Such visits were made viâ Morlaix and Plymouth. Savary, Napoleon's Minister of Police, boasts in his Memoirs not only of procuring the escape of French prisoners from England and of keeping spies there, but of permitting occasional visits in order thereby to fathom Bourbon intrigues.
The retreat from Moscow gave the captives the first tangible prospect of deliverance, yet for a time it aggravated their position. In January 1814 those interned at Verdun were ordered to Blois, as also those in Paris, but very few of the latter obtaining exemption. At Blois they were ordered on to Guéret. There news arrived of Napoleon's abdication, and they were released. Some of them left debts behind them which they apparently regarded as "spoiling the Egyptians," for in 1839 a deputation from Verdun had an audience of Lord Palmerston to solicit repayment of £140,000 due by the former captives. The creditors, it seems, had waited till 1837, or had made representations to the individual debtors, but from that date the French Government had urged their claim to repayment by the British Treasury. The deputation stated that the number of prisoners at Verdun was never below
