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I signed,” he later said.
    Marie-Josèphe busied herself writing to various people trying to free her husband. By doing so, she secured her own fate. The Committee of Public Safety received a letter denouncing Marie-Josèphe and Madame Hosten for running a “gathering place for suspected persons.” The writer told the committee: “Beware of the former Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, who has secret dealings and connections with government offices.” 11 On Easter Sunday 1794, late at night, citoyens Lacombe and George arrived to search the home of Marie-Josèphe and Madame Hosten. The men conducted their mission with care. “After the most scrupulous search,” they reported, “we have found nothing contrary to the interests of the Republic; on the contrary, a multitude of patriotic letters which can only commend the citoyenne.” 12 But their fair treatment was immaterial. The next day the women were arrested. Marie-Josèphe could not bring herself to wake her children. “I could not bear to see them cry,” she told their governess, Mademoiselle de Lannoy. 13 She and Madame Hosten were taken to Les Carmes, the most infamous prison in Paris. Alexandre was already there, desperate and ill. At thirty, Marie-Josèphe was doomed. No one expected to get out of Les Carmes alive.
    Once an orderly convent, Les Carmes had quickly become dirty and infested with rats and lice. The walls were still spattered with blood from the September Massacres. Three hundred inmates waited there to die. Marie-Josèphe shared a cell on the first floor with several other women, including the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, and hundreds of mice. The windows overlooked the garden, but they were barred, and theprisoners saw little daylight. The fetid mess from the latrine buckets overflowed in the corridors, and the place reeked of human misery. Many prisoners had given up hope and sat barely dressed, hardly able to wash themselves or care about their surroundings. Outside, as they knew, the streets around the guillotine ran red with blood. Marie-Josèphe longed for her children. She wrote to Hortense, “I embrace you both from the bottom of my heart.” 14
    The prisoners were suffering, but at least there was food. At mealtimes in the refectory—first the men and then the women—each prisoner was given a half bottle of wine and as much stale bread as they could manage. In the afternoon husbands and wives, mothers and sons could snatch a few hours together as the prisoners were sent out into the courtyard for fresh air. Marie-Josèphe had many friends there, including the prince of Salm, who had been captured after he came to the city to return Hortense and Eugène.
    In the afternoons, the prisoners would chat, walk, and play cards in the recreation area. The Revolutionary Tribunal usually came to collect those chosen to be guillotined in the morning, although the carts sometimes came back for others in the afternoon. The prisoners were brave: It was convention that they should simply wave goodbye to their companions with a sanguine air. After all, every man and woman who watched a victim being taken away knew that he or she might be taken tomorrow. The end of the recreation period was a momentary relief, since the tribunal tended not to come at night.
    The day after she arrived, Marie-Josèphe saw her husband in the recreation area. He had become rapturously devoted to one of Marie-Josèphe’s cellmates, Delphine de Custine, the blond widow of a general, whom he called the “queen of roses.” But still he was devastated—if not surprised—to see his wife in prison, and concerned that his children had been left unprotected.
    Like many of the women, Marie-Josèphe cut her hair short while in prison to avoid having the executioner cut her hair right before death. Short hair was also more practical in the lice-ridden cells where there was little chance to wash. Within a week of arriving at the prison, Marie-Josèphe’s health and spirits were low. She was