224 BAILLY. 
he could not but set Bailly at liberty, under pain of for- 
feiture. Vain efforts! To avoid a bloody catastrophe, it 
was necessary to promise that reference would be made 
to Paris, and that in the mean time he should be guarded 
— a vue—in his own house. . 
The surveillance, perhaps purposely, was not at all 
strict ; to escape would have been very easy. Bailly 
utterly discarded the notion. He would not at any price 
have compromised M. Tarbé, nor even his guard. 
An order from the Committee of Public Safety en- 
joined the authorities of Mélun to transfer Bailly to one 
of the prisons of the capital. On the day of departure, 
Madame Laplace paid a visit to our unfortunate colleague. 
She represented to him again the possibility of escape. 
The first scruples no longer existed; the escort was 
already waiting in the street. But Bailly was inflexible. 
He felt perfectly safe. Madame Laplace held her son in 
her arms; Bailly took the opportunity of turning the 
conversation to the education of children. He treated 
the subject, to which he might well have been thought a 
stranger, with a remarkable superiority, and ended even 
with several amusing anecdotes that would deserve a 
place in the witty and comic gallery of “les Enfants 
terribles.” 
On arriving at Paris, Bailly was imprisoned at the 
Madelonnettes, and some days after at La Force. They 
there granted him a room, where his wife and _ his 
nephews were permitted to visit him. 
Bailly had undergone only one examination of little 
importance, when he was summoned as a witness in the 
trial of the queen. 3 
