But already the palace was deserted by those who were the intended objects of the attack. Roederer, and one or two of the municipal magistrates, in whom the indignity with which the new commissioners of the sections had treated them had excited a feeling of personal indignation, had been actively endeavoring to rouse the National Guards to an energetic resistance; but they had wholly failed. Those who listened to them most favorably would only promise to defend themselves if attacked, while some of the artillery-men drew the charges from their guns and extinguished their matches. Roederer, whom the strange vicissitudes of the crisis had for the moment rendered the king's chief adviser, though there seems no reason to doubt his good faith, was not a man of that fiery courage which hopes against hope, and can stimulate waverers by its example. He saw that if the rioters should succeed in storming the palace, and should find the king and his family there, the moment that made them masters of their persons would be the last of their lives and of the monarchy. He returned into the palace to represent to Louis the utter hopelessness of making any defense, and to recommend him, as his sole resource, to claim the protection of the Assembly. The queen, who, to use her own words, would have preferred being nailed to the walls of the palace to seeking a refuge which she deemed degrading, pointed to the soldiers, and showed by her gestures that they were the only protectors whom it became them to look to. Roederer assured her that they could not he relied on. She seemed unconvinced. He almost forgot his respect in his earnestness. "If you refuse, madame, you will be guilty of the blood of the king, of your two children; you will destroy yourself, and every soul within the palace." While she was still hesitating between her feeling of shame and her anxiety for those dearest to her, the king gave the word. "Let us go," said he. "Let us give this last proof of our devotion to the Constitution." The princess spoke. "Could Roederer answer for the king's life?" He affirmed that he would answer for it with his own. The queen repeated the question. "Madame," he replied, "we will answer for dying at your side—that is all that we can promise." "Let us go," said Louis, and moved toward the door. Even at the last moment, one officer, M. Boscari, commander of a battalion of the National Guard, known as that of Les Filles St. Thomas, whose loyalty no disaster had ever been able to shake, implored him to change his mind. His men, united to the Swiss, would be able, he said, to cut a way for the royal family to the Rouen road; the insurgents were all on the other side of the city, and nothing could resist him. But again, as on all previous occasions, Louis rejected the brave advice. He pleaded the risk to which he should expose those dearest to him, and led them to almost certain death in committing them to the Assembly. Some of De Mailly's gentlemen gathered round him to accompany him; but such an escort seemed to Roederer likely to provoke additional animosity, and at his entreaty Louis trusted himself to a company of his faithful Swiss and to a detachment of the National Guard, who formed themselves into an escort to conduct him to the Assembly, whose hall looked into one side of the palace garden.

The minister for foreign affairs walked at his side. The queen leaned on the arm of M. Dubouchage, the minister of marine, and with the other hand led the dauphin. The Princess Elizabeth and the princess royal followed with another minister. And thus, with the Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, and one or two other ministers and attendants, the royal family left the palace of their ancestors, which only one of them was ever to behold again. As they quit the saloon, moved down the stairs, and crossed the garden, their every step was one toward a downfall and a destruction which could never be retraced. Marie Antoinette felt it to be so, and, as she reached the foot of the staircase, cast restless and anxious glances around, looking perhaps even then for any prospect of succor or of effectual resistance which might present itself. One of the Swiss misunderstood her, and with rude fidelity endeavored to encourage her. "Fear nothing, madame," said he, "your majesty is surrounded by honest citizens." She laid her hand on her heart. "I do fear nothing," and passed on without another word.

As they crossed the garden the king broke the silence. "How unusually early," he remarked, "the leaves fall this year!" To those who heard him, the bareness which he remarked seemed an omen of the fate which awaited himself, about to be stripped of his royal dignity; perhaps even, like some superfluous crowder of the grove, to fall beneath the axe. The Assembly had already been deliberating whether it should invite him to take refuge with them when they heard that he was approaching. It was instantly voted that a deputation should be sent to meet him, which, after a few words of respectful salutation, fell in behind. A vast crowd was collected outside the doors of the hall. They hooted the king, and, still more bitterly, the queen, as they advanced. "Down with Veto!" was the chief cry; but mingled with it were still more unmanly insults, invoking more especially death on all the women. But the Guards kept the mob at a distance, though when they reached the hall the Jacobins made an effort to deprive them of that protection. They declared that it was illegal for soldiers to enter the hall, as indeed it was; yet without them the princes must at the last moment have been exposed to all the fury of the mob. At this critical moment Roederer showed both fidelity and presence of mind. He implored the deputies to suspend the law which forbade the entrance of the troops, and, while the Jacobins were reviling him and his proposal, he pretended to suppose that it had been agreed to, and led forward a detachment of soldiers who cleared the way. One grenadier look up the dauphin in his arms and carried him in; and, although the pressure of the crowd was extreme, at last the whole family were placed within the hall in such safety as the Assembly was able or disposed to afford them.

Louis bore himself not without dignity. His words were few but calm. "I am come here to prevent a great crime. I think I can not be better placed, nor more safely, gentlemen, than among you." The president, who happened to be Vergniaud, while appearing to desire to give him confidence, yet avoided uttering a single word, except the simple address of "sire," which should be a recognition of the royal dignity, if indeed his speech was not a studied disavowal of it. Louis might reckon, he said, on the firmness of the National Assembly: its members had sworn to die in support of the rights of the people and of the constituted authorities: and then, on the plea that the Assembly must continue its deliberations, and that the law forbade them to be conducted in the presence of the sovereign, he assigned him and his family a little box behind the president's chair, which was usually set apart for the reporters of the debates. A Jacobin deputy proposed their removal into one of the committee-rooms, with the idea, as he afterward boasted, that it would be easy there to admit a band of assassins to murder them all; but Vergniaud and his party divined his object and overruled him. It might seem that the Girondins, though they had been the original promoters and chief organizers of the insurrection, were as yet disposed to be content with the overthrow of the throne, and had not arrived at the hardihood which can not be sated without murder; and it is a remarkable instance of the rapidity with which unprincipled men sink deeper and deeper into iniquity, that they who now exerted themselves successfully to save the life of Louis, five months afterward were as unanimous as the most ferocious Jacobins in destroying him.

One object of Louis in abandoning his palace had been to save the lives of the National Guards and of the Swiss, by withdrawing them from what he regarded as an unequal combat with the infuriated multitude; and of the National Guard the greater part did escape, drawing off silently in small detachments, when the sovereign whom it had been their duty to defend, seemed no longer to require their service. But the Swiss remained bravely at their posts around the royal staircase, though, as they abstained from provoking the rioters by any active opposition, which now seemed to have no object, they hoped that they might escape attack. But the mob and Santerre were bent on their destruction. Some of the insurgents tried to provoke them by threats. Some endeavored to tamper with them to desert their allegiance. But an accidental interruption suddenly terminated their brief period of inaction. In the confusion a pistol went off, and the Swiss fancied it was meant as a signal for an assault upon them. Thinking that the time was come to defend their own lives, they leveled their muskets and fired: they charged down the steps, driving the insurgents before them like sheep; they cleared the inner or royal court, forced their way into the Carrousel, recovered the cannon which were posted in the large square, and were so completely victorious that, had there been any superior officer at hand to direct their movements, they might even now have checked the insurrection.

There might even have been some hope had not Louis himself actually interfered to check their exertions. Hearing what they had accomplished, the gallant D'Hervilly made his way to them, and called on them to follow him to the rescue of the king. They hesitated, unwilling to leave their wounded comrades to the mercy of their enemies; but their hesitation was brief, for it was put an end to by the wounded men themselves, who bid them hasten forward; their duty, they told them, was to save the king; for themselves, they could but die where they lay.[4] There were still plenty of gallant spirits to do their duty to the king, if he could but have been persuaded to take a right view of his duty to himself and to them.

The Swiss gladly obeyed D'Hervilly's summons. Forming in close order, and as steady as on parade, they marched through the garden, one battalion moving toward the end opposite to the palace, where there was a draw-bridge which it was essential to secure; the other following D'Hervilly to the Assembly hall. Nothing could resist their advance: they forced their way up the stairs; and in a few moments a young officer, M. de Salis, at the head of a small detachment, sword in hand, entered the chamber. Some of the deputies shrieked and fled, while others, more calm, reminded him that armed men were forbidden to enter the hall, and ordered him to retire. He refused, and sent his subaltern to the king for orders. But Louis still held to his strange policy of non-resistance. Even the terrible scenes of the morning, and the deliberate attack of an armed mob upon his palace, had failed to eradicate his unwillingness to authorize his own Guards to fight in his behalf, or to convince him that when his throne (perhaps even his life and the lives of all his family) was at stake, it was nobler to struggle for victory, and, if defeated, to die with arms in his hands, than tamely to sit still and be stripped of his kingly dignity by brigands and traitors. Could he but have summoned energy to put himself at the head of his faithful Guards, as we may be sure that his brave wife urged him to do; could he have even sent them one encouraging order, one cheering word, there still might have been hope; for they had already proved that no number of Santerre's ruffians could stand before them.[5] But Louis could not even now bring himself to act; he could only suffer. His command to the officer, the last he ever issued, was for the whole battalion to lay down their arms, to evacuate the palace, and to retire to their barracks. He would not, he said, that such brave men should die. They knew that in fact he was consigning them to death without honor; but they were loyal to the last. They obeyed, though their obedience to the first part of the order rendered the last part impracticable. They laid down their arms, and were at once made prisoners; and the fate of prisoners in such hands as those of their captors was certain. A small handful, consisting, it is said, of fourteen men, escaped through the courage of one or two friends, who presently brought them plain clothes to exchange for their uniforms, but before night all the rest were massacred.

Not more fortunate were their comrades of the other battalion, except in falling by a more soldier-like death. Though no longer supported by the detachment under D'Hervilly, they succeeded in forcing their way to the draw-bridge. It was held by a strong detachment of the National Guard, who ought to have received them as comrades, but who had now caught the contagion of successful treason, and fired on them as they advanced. But the gallant Swiss, in spite of their diminished numbers still invincible, charged through them, forced their way across the bridge into the Place Louis XV., and there formed themselves into square, resolved to sell their lives dearly. It was all that was left to them to do. The mounted gendarmery, too, came up and turned against them. Hemmed in on all sides, they fell one after another; Louis, who had refused to let them die for him, having only given their death the additional pang that it had been of no service to him.

The retreat of the king had left the Tuileries at the mercy of the rioters. Furious to find that he had escaped them, they wreaked their rage on the lifeless furniture, breaking, hewing, and destroying in every way that wantonness or malice could devise. Different articles which had belonged to the queen were the especial objects of their wrath. Crowds of the vilest women arrayed themselves in her dresses, or defiled her bed. Her looking-glasses were broken, with imprecations, because they had reflected her features. Her footmen were pursued and slaughtered because they had been wont to obey her. Nor were the monsters who slew them contented with murder. They tore the dead bodies into pieces; devoured the still bleeding fragments, or deliberately lighted fire and cooked them; or, hoisting the severed limbs on pikes, carried them in fiendish triumph through the streets.

And while these horrors were going on in the palace, the tumult in the Assembly was scarcely less furious. The majority of the members—all, indeed, except the Girondins and Jacobins, who were secure in their alliance with the ringleaders—were panic-stricken. Many fled, but the rest sat still, and in terrified helplessness voted whatever resolutions the fiercest of the king's enemies chose to propose. It was an ominous preliminary to their deliberations that they admitted a deputation from the commissioners of the sections into the hall, where Guadet, to whom Vergniaud had surrendered the president's chair, thanked them for their zeal, and assured them that the Assembly regarded them as virtuous citizens only anxious for the restoration of peace and order. They were even formally recognized as the Municipal Council; and then, on the motion of Vergniaud, the Assembly passed a series of resolutions, ordering the suspension of Louis from all authority; his confinement in the Luxembourg Palace; the dismissal and impeachment of his ministers; the re-appointment of Roland and those of his colleagues whom he had dismissed, and the immediate election of a National Convention. A large pecuniary reward was even voted for the Marseillese, and for similar gangs from one or two other departments which had been brought up to Paris to take a part in the insurrection.

Yet so deeply seated were hope and confidence in the queen's heart, so sanguine was her trust that out of the mutual enmity of the populace and the Assembly safety would still be wrought for the king and the monarchy, that even while the din of battle was raging outside the hall, and inside deputy after deputy was rising to heap insults on the king and on herself, or to second Vergniaud's resolutions for his formal degradation, she could still believe that the tide was about to turn in her favor. While the uproar was at its height she turned to D'Hervilly, who still kept his post, faithful and fearless, at his master's side. "Well, M. d'Hervilly," said she, with an air, as M. Bertrand, who tells the story, describes it, of the most perfect security, "did we not do well not to leave Paris?" "I pray God," said the brave noble, "that your majesty may be able to ask me the same question in six months' time.[6]" His foreboding was truer than her hopes. In less than six months she was a desolate, imprisoned widow, helplessly awaiting her own fate from her husband's murderers.

All these resolutions of Vergniaud, all the ribald abuse with which different members supported them, the unhappy sovereigns were condemned to hear in the narrow box to which they had been removed. They bore the insults, the queen with her habitual dignity, the king with his inveterate apathy; Louis even speaking occasionally with apparent cheerfulness to some of the deputies. The constant interruptions protracted the discussions through the entire day. It was half-past three in the morning before the Assembly adjourned, when the king and his family were removed to the adjacent Convent of the Feuillants, where four wretched cells had been hastily furnished with camp-beds, and a few other necessaries of the coarsest description. So little was any attempt made to disguise the fact that they were prisoners, that their own domestic servants were not allowed the next day to attend them till they had received a formal ticket of admittance from the president. Yet even in this extremity of distress Marie Antoinette thought of others rather than of herself; and when at last her faithful attendant, Madame de Campan, obtained access to her, her first words expressed how greatly her own sorrows were aggravated by the thought that she had involved in them those loyal friends whose attachment merited a very different recompense.[7]



CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Indignities to which the Royal Family are subjected.—They are removed to the Temple.—Divisions in the Assembly.—Flight of La Fayette.—Advance of the Prussians.—Lady Sutherland supplies the Dauphin with Clothes.—Mode of Life in the Temple.—The Massacres of September.—The Death of the Princess de Lamballe.—Insults are heaped on the King and Queen.—The Trial of the King.—His Last Interview with his Family.—His Death.

From the 11th of August the life of Marie Antoinette is almost a blank to us. We may be even thankful that it is so, and that we are spared the details, in all their accumulated miseries, of a series of events which are a disgrace to human nature. For month after month the gentle, benevolent king, whom no sovereign ever exceeded in love for his people, or in the exercise of every private virtue; the equally pure-minded, charitable, and patriotic queen, who, to the somewhat passive excellences of her husband added fascinating graces and lofty energies of which he was unhappily destitute, were subjected to the most disgusting indignities, to the tyranny of the vilest monsters who ever usurped authority over a nation, and to the daily insults of the meanest of their former subjects, who thought to make a merit with their new masters of their brutality to those whose birthright had been the submission and reverence of all around them.

Vergniaud's motion had only extended to the suspension of the king from his functions till the meeting of the Convention; but no one could doubt that that suspension would never be taken off, and that Louis was in fact dethroned. Marie Antoinette never deceived herself on the point, and, retaining the opinion as to the fate of deposed monarchs which she had expressed three years before, pronounced that all was over with them. "My poor children," said she, apostrophizing the little dauphin and his sister, "it is cruel to give up the hope of transmitting to you so noble an inheritance, and to have to say that all is at an end with ourselves;" and, lest any one else should have any doubt on the subject, the Assembly no longer headed its decrees with any royal title, but published them in the name of the nation. In one point the resolutions of the 10th were slightly departed from. The municipal authorities reported that the Luxembourg had so many outlets and subterranean passages, that it would be difficult to prevent the escape of a prisoner from that palace; and accordingly the destination of the royal family was changed to the Temple. Thither, after having been compelled to spend two more days in the Assembly, listening to the denunciations and threats of their enemies, whom even the knowledge that they were wholly in their power failed to pacify, they were conveyed on the 13th; and they never quit it till they were dragged forth to die.

The Temple had been, as its name imported, the fortress and palace of the Knights Templars, and, having been erected by them in the palmy days of their wealth and magnificence, contained spacious apartments, and extensive gardens protected from intrusion by a lofty wall, which surrounded the whole. It was not, unfit for, nor unaccustomed to, the reception of princes; for the Count d'Artois had fitted up a portion of it for himself whenever he visited the capital. And to his apartments those who had the custody of the king and queen at first conducted them. But the new Municipal Council, whom the recent events had made the real masters of Paris, considered those rooms too comfortable or too honorable a lodging for any prisoners, however royal; and the same night, before they could retire to rest, and while Louis was still occupying himself in distributing the different apartments among the members of his family and the few attendants who were allowed to share his captivity, an order was sent down to remove them all into a small dilapidated tower which had been used as a lodging for some of the count's footmen, but whose bad walls and broken windows rendered it unfit for even the servants of a prince. Besides their meanness and ruinous condition, the number of the rooms it contained was so scanty, that for the first few days the only room that could be found for the Princess Elizabeth was an old, disused kitchen; and even after that was remedied, she was forced to share her new chamber, though it was both small and dark, with her niece, Madame Royale; while the dauphin's bed was placed by the side of the queen's, in one which was but little large.[1] And the dungeon-like appearance of the entire place impressed the whole family with the idea that it was not intended that they should remain there long, but that an early death was preparing for them.

Even this distress was speedily aggravated by a fresh severity. Four days afterward an order was sent down which commanded the removal of all their attendants, with the exception of one or two menial servants. Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, was driven away with the coarsest insults. The Princess de Lamballe, that most faithful and affectionate friend of the queen, was rudely torn from her embrace by the municipal officers; and, though no offense was even imputed to her, was dragged off to a prison, where she was soon to pay the forfeit of her loyalty with her blood.

From this time forth the king and queen were completely cut off from the outer world. They were treated with a rigor which in happier countries is not even experienced by convicted criminals. They were forbidden to receive letters or newspapers; and presently they were deprived of pens, ink, and paper; though they would neither have desired to write nor receive letters which would have been read by their jailers, and could only have exposed their correspondents to danger. After a few days they were even deprived of the attendance of all their servants but two[2]—a faithful valet named Clery (fidelity such as his may well immortalize his name), to whom we are indebted for the greater part of the scanty knowledge which we possess of the fate of the captive princes as long as Louis himself was permitted to live; and Turgy, a cook, who, by an act of faithful boldness, had obtained a surreptitious entrance into the Temple, and whose services seemed to have escaped notice, though at a later period they proved of no trivial importance.

Had they but known what was passing in the Assembly, Marie Antoinette would in all probability have still found matter for some comfort and hope in the fierce mutual strife of the Jacobins and Girondins, which for some weeks kept the Assembly in a constant state of agitation; and she would have found even greater encouragement in the dissatisfaction which in many departments the people expressed at the late events; and in the conduct of La Fayette's army, which at first cordially approved of and supported the town-council and magistrates of Sedan, who arrested and threw into prison the commissioners whom the Assembly had sent to announce the suspension of the royal authority. But the intelligence of that demonstration in their favor never reached them, nor that of its suppression a few days later; when La Fayette, who, as on a former occasion, had committed himself to measures beyond his strength to carry out, was forced to fly from the country, and by a strange violation of military law was thrown into an Austrian prison. Nor again, when for a moment the Duke of Brunswick appeared likely to realize the hopes on which Marie Antoinette had built so confidently, and by the capture of Longwy seemed to have opened to himself the road to Paris, did any tidings of his achievement come to the ears of those who had felt such deep interest in his operations. After a time the ingenuity of Clery found a mode of obtaining for them some little knowledge of what was passing outside, by contriving that some of his friends should send criers to cry an abstract of the news contained in the daily journals under his windows, which he in his turn faithfully reported to them while employed in such menial offices about their persons as took off the attention of their guards, who day and night maintained an unceasing espial on all their actions and even words.

From the very first they had to endure strange privations for princes. They had not a sufficient supply of clothes; the little dauphin, in particular, would have been wholly unprovided, had not the English embassadress, Lady Sutherland, whose son was of a similar age and size, sent in a stock of such as she thought might be wanted. But as the garments thus received wore out, and as all means of replacing them were refused, the queen and princess were reduced to ply their own needles diligently to mend the clothes of the whole family, that they might not appear to their jailers, or to the occupants of the surrounding houses, who from their windows could command a view of the garden in which they took their daily walks, absolutely ragged.

Such enforced occupation must indeed in some degree have been welcome as a relief from thought, which their unbroken solitude left them but too much leisure to indulge. Clery has given us an account of the manner in which their day was parceled out.[3] The king rose at six, and Clery, after dressing his hair, descended to the queen's chamber, which was on the story below, to perform the same service for her and for the rest of the family. And the hour so spent brought with it some slight comfort, as he could avail himself of that opportunity to mention any thing that he might have learned of what was passing out-of-doors, or to receive any instructions which they might desire to give him. At nine they breakfasted in the king's room. At ten they came down-stairs again to the queen's apartments, where Louis occupied himself in giving the dauphin lessons in geography, while Marie Antoinette busied herself in a corresponding manner with Madame Royale. But, in whatever room they were, their guards were always present; and when, at one o'clock, they went down-stairs to walk in the garden, they were still accompanied by soldiers: the only member of the family who was not exposed to their ceaseless vigilance being the little dauphin, who was allowed to run up and down and play at ball with Clery, without a soldier thinking it necessary to watch all his movements or listen to all his childish exclamations. At two dinner was served, and regularly at that hour the odious Santerre, with two other ruffians of the same stamp, whom he called his aids-de-camp, visited them to make sure of their presence and to inspect their rooms; and Clery remarked that the queen never broke her disdainful silence to him, though Louis often spoke to him, generally to receive some answer of brutal insult. After dinner, Louis and Marie Antoinette would play piquet or backgammon; as, while they were thus engaged, the vigilance of their keepers relaxed, and the noise of shuffling the cards or rattling the dice afforded them opportunities of saying a few words in whispers to one another, which at other times would have been overheard. In the evening the queen and the Princess Elizabeth read aloud, the books chosen being chiefly works of history, or the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, as being most suitable to form the minds and tastes of the children; and sometimes Louis himself would seek to divert them from their sorrows by asking the children riddles, and finding some amusement in their attempts to solve them. At bed-time the queen herself made the dauphin say his prayers, teaching him especially the duty of praying for others, for the Princess de Lamballe, and for Madame de Tourzel, his governess; though even those petitions the poor boy was compelled to utter in whispers, lest, if they were repeated to the Municipal Council, he should bring ruin on those whom he regarded as friends. At ten the family separated for the night, a sentinel making his bed across the door of each of their chambers, to prevent the possibility of any escape.

In this way they passed a fortnight, when the monotony of their lives was fearfully disturbed. The Jacobins had established their ascendency. They had created a Revolutionary Tribunal, which at once began its course of wholesale condemnation, sending almost every one who was brought before it to the scaffold with merely a form of trial; the guillotine being erected, as it was said, en permanence, that the deaths of the victims might never be delayed for want of means to execute them; while, that a succession of victims might never be wanting, Danton, in his new character of Minister of Justice, instituted a search of every house for arms or papers, or any thing which might afford evidence or even suggest a suspicion that the owners disliked or feared the new authorities.

But it was not enough to strike terror into all the peaceful citizens. The Girondins had always been objects of jealous rivalry to the Jacobins. Fanatical and relentless as they were in their cruelty, they had recently given proofs that they disapproved of the furious blood-thirstiness that was beginning to decimate the city, and they had carried the Assembly with them in a vote for the dissolution of the new Municipal Council. At the same time, intelligence of the Prussian successes readied the capital, intelligence which, it seemed possible, might animate the Royalists to some fresh effort; and, lest they should find means of reconciling themselves to Vergniaud and his party, the Jacobins and Cordeliers resolved to give both a lesson by a deed of blood which should strike terror into them. We may spare ourselves the pain of relating the horrors of the September massacre, when, for more than four days, gangs of men worse than devils, and of women unsexed by profligacy and cruelty till they had become worse even than the men, gave themselves up to the work of indiscriminate slaughter, deluging the streets with blood, and where they could spare time, aggravating the pangs of death by superfluous tortures. It will be sufficient for our purpose to record the fate of one of the most innocent of all the victims, who owed her death to the fact that she had long been the queen's most chosen friend, and whose murder was gloated over with special ferocity by the monsters who perpetrated it, as enabling them to inflict an additional pang on her wretched friend and mistress.

Madame de Lamballe, as we have seen, had accompanied the queen to the Temple on the first day of her captivity, and had subsequently been removed to one of the city prisons known as La Force. It was on the prisoners in the different places of confinement that the work of death was to be done: and she had been specially marked out for slaughter, not solely because she was beloved by Marie Antoinette, but also, it was understood, because, as she was very rich, and sister-in-law to the Duc d'Orleans, that detestable prince desired to add her inheritance to his OWD already vast riches. She was dragged before Hebert, one of the foulest of the Jacobin crew, who had taken his seat at the gate of the prison to preside over the trials, as they were called, of the prisoners in La Force. "Swear," said he, "devotion to liberty and to the nation, and hatred to the king and queen, and you shall live." "I will take the first oath," she replied, "but the second never; it is not in my heart. The king and queen I have ever loved and honored." Almost before she had finished speaking she was pushed into the gate-way. One ruffian struck her from behind with his sabre. She fell. They tore her into pieces. A letter of the queen's fell from her hair, in which she had hidden it. The sight of it redoubled the assassins' fury. They stuck her head on a pike, and carried it in triumph to the Palais Royal to display it to D'Orleans, who was feasting with some of the companions of his daily orgies, and then proceeded to the Temple to brandish it before the eyes of the queen.

It was about three o'clock.[4] Dinner had just been removed, and the king and queen were sitting down to play backgammon, when horrid shouts were heard in the street. One of the soldiers on guard in the room, who had not yet laid aside every feeling of humanity, closed the window and even drew the curtain. Another of different temper insisted that Louis should come to the window and show himself. As the uproar increased, the queen rose from her seat, and the king asked what was the matter. "Well," said the man, "since you wish to know, they want to show you the head of Madame de Lamballe." No event that had yet occurred had struck the queen with such anguish. The uproar increased. Those who bore the head had wished even to force the doors, and bring their trophy, still bleeding, into the very room where the royal family were, and were only prevented by a compromise which permitted them to parade it round their tower in triumph. As the shouts died away, Petion's secretary arrived with a small sum of money which had been issued for the king's use. He noticed that the queen stood all the time that he was in the room, and fancied she assumed that attitude out of respect to the mayor. She had never stirred since she had heard of the princess's death, but had stood rooted, as it were, to the ground, stupefied and speechless with horror and anguish. It was long before she could be restored; and all through the night the rest of the princesses, if at least they could have slept, was broken by her sobs, which never ceased.

As time passed on, the prospects of the unhappy prisoners became still more gloomy. On the 21st of September the Convention met, and its first act was to abolish royalty and declare the government a republic, and an officer was instantly sent to make proclamation of the event under the Temple walls; and, as if the establishment of a republic authorized an increase of insolence on the part of the guards of the prisoners, the insults to which they were subjected grew more frequent and more gross. Sentences both menacing and indecent were written on the walls where they must catch their eye: the soldiers puffed their tobacco-smoke in the queen's face as she passed, or placed their seats in the passages so much in her way that she could hardly avoid stumbling over their legs as she went down to the garden. Sometimes they even assailed her with direct abuse, calling her the assassin of the people, who in their turn would assassinate her. More than once the whole family had to submit to a personal search, and to empty their pockets, when the officers who made the search carried off whatever they chose to term suspicious, especially their knives and scissors, so that, when at work, the queen and princess were forced to bite off the threads with their teeth. And amidst all this misery no one ever heard Marie Antoinette utter a word to lament her own fate, or to ask pity for herself. She mourned over her husband's fall; she pitied Elizabeth, to whom malice itself could not impute a share in the wrongs of which Danton and Vergniaud had taught the people to complain. Most of all did she bewail the ruined prospects of her son; and more than once she brought tears into Clery's eyes by the earnest tenderness with which she implored him to provide for the safety of the noble child after his parents should have been destroyed.

The insults increased, each being an additional omen of the future. The most painful injuries were reserved for the queen. Toward the end of October the dauphin was removed from her apartment to that of the king, that she might thus be deprived of the comfort of ministering to his daily wants. But Louis himself was not spared. One day an order came down to deprive him of his sword; on another he was stripped of his different decorations and orders of knighthood. The system of espial, too, was carried out with increased severity. Their linen, when it came hack from the washer-woman, and even their washing-bills, were held to the fire to see if any invisible ink had been employed to communicate with them. Their loaves and biscuits were cut asunder lest they should contain notes. The end was approaching. A week or two later the king was removed to another tower, and was only permitted to see his family during a certain portion of the day. At last it was determined to bring him to trial. On the 11th of December he was suddenly informed that he was to be brought before the Convention; and from that day forth he was cut off from all intercourse with his family, even his wife being forbidden to see or hear from him. The barbarous restriction afforded him one more opportunity of showing his amiable unselfishness and fortitude. The regulation had been made by the Municipal Council, not by the Assembly; and its inhuman and unprecedented severity, coupled with a jealousy of the Council, as seeking to usurp the whole authority of the State, induced the Assembly to rescind it, and to grant permission, for Louis to have the dauphin and his sister with him. Yet, lest these innocent children should prove messengers of conspiracy between him and the queen and Elizabeth, it was ordered at the same time that, so long as they were allowed to visit him, they should be separated from their mother and their aunt; and Louis, though never in greater need of comfort, thought it so much better for the children themselves that they should be with the queen, that for their sakes he renounced their society, and allowed the decree of the Council to be carried out in all its pitiless cruelty.

And, again, we may spare ourselves from dwelling on the details of what, in hideous mockery, was called the king's trial, though it was in fact a mere ceremonious prelude to his murder, which had been determined on before it began. Deep as is the disgrace with which it has forever covered the nation which tolerated such an abomination, it was relieved by some incidents which did honor to the country and to human nature. The murderers of Louis, in their ignoble pedantry, wearied the ear with appeals to the examples of the ancient Romans, of Decius[5] and of Brutus. But no Roman ever gave a nobler proof of contempt of danger, and devotion to duty, than was afforded by the intrepid lawyers, Malesherbes, De Seze, and Tronchet, who voluntarily undertook the king's defense, though Louis himself warned them that their utmost efforts would be fruitless, and would only bring destruction on themselves without saving him. One member, too, of the Convention, Lanjuinais, though originally he had been a member of the Breton Club, and had latterly been generally regarded as connected with the Girondins, made more than one eloquent effort in the king's behalf, provoking the Jacobins and Girondins to their very wildest fury by his contemptuous defiance of their menaces. And even when the verdict was being given; when Jacobins, Girondins, and Cordeliers, Robespierre, Vergniaud, Danton, and the infamous Duc d'Orleans were vying with one another in the eagerness with which they pushed forward to record their votes of condemnation; and when a mob of hired ruffians, who thronged the hall, were cheering every vote for death, and holding daggers to the throat of every one from whom they apprehended a contrary judgment; one noble of frail body, but of a spirit worthy of his birth and rank, the Marquis de Villette, laughed in the faces of his threateners, looked the assassins in the face, and told them that he would not obey their orders, and that they dared not kill him; and with a loud voice pronounced a vote of acquittal.

But no courage or devotion of a few honest men could save Louis. One vote by an immense majority pronounced him guilty; a second refused all appeal to the people; a third, by a majority of fifty voices, condemned him to death. And on the morning of the 20th of January, 1793, Louis was roused from his bed to hear his sentence, and to learn that it was to be carried out the next day.

While the trial lasted, the queen and those with her had been kept in almost absolute ignorance of what was taking place. They never, however, doubted what the result would be,[6] so that it was scarcely a shock to them when they heard the news-men crying the sentence under their windows —the only mercy that was shown to either the prisoner who was to die, or to those who were to survive him, being that they were allowed once more to meet on earth. At eight in the evening the queen, his children, and his sister were to be allowed to visit him. He prepared for the interview with astonishing calmness, making the arrangements so deliberately that, when he noticed that Clery had placed a bottle of iced water on the table, he bid him change it, lest, if the queen should require any, the chill should prove injurious to her health. Even that last interview was not allowed to pass wholly without witnesses, since the Municipal Council refused, even on such an occasion, to relax their regulation that their guards were never to lose sight-of the king; and all that was permitted was that he might retire with his family into an inner room which had a glass door, so that, though what passed must be seen, their last words might not be overheard. His daughter, Madame Royale, now a girl of fourteen, and old enough, as her mother had said a few months before, to realize the misery of the scenes which she daily saw around her, has left us an account of the interview, necessarily a brief one, for the queen and princess were too wretched to say much. Louis wept when he announced to them how short was the time which he had to live, but his tears were those of pity for the desolation of those he loved, and not of fear for himself. He was even, in some sense, a willing victim, for, as he told them, it had been proposed to save him by appealing to the primary Assemblies of the nation; but he had refused his consent to a step which must throw the whole country into confusion, and might be the cause of civil war. He would rather die than risk the bringing of such calamities on his people. He even sought to comfort the queen by making some excuses for the monsters who had condemned him; and his last words to his family were an entreaty to forgive them; to his son, an injunction never to seek to revenge his death, even, if some change of fortune should enable him to do so.

The queen said nothing, but sat clinging to him in speechless agony. At last he begged them to retire, that he might seek rest to prepare himself for the morrow; and then she spoke, to beg that at least they might meet again the next morning. "Yes," said he, "at eight o'clock." "Why not at seven?" asked she. "Well, then, at seven." But, after she had left him he determined to avoid this second meeting, not so much because he feared its unnerving himself, but because he felt that the second parting must be too terrible for her.

When she returned to her own chamber she had scarcely strength left to place the dauphin in his bed. She threw herself, dressed as she was, on her own bed, where her sister-in-law and daughter heard her, as the little princess describes her state, "shivering with cold and grief the whole night long.[7]"

Even if she could have slept, her rest would soon have been disturbed by the movement of troops, the beating of the drums, and the heavy roll of the cannon passing through the street. For the miscreants who bore sway in the city knew well that the crime which they were about to commit was viewed with horror by the great majority of the nation, and even of the Parisians, and to the last moment were afraid of a rescue. But no one could interpose between Louis and his doom; and the next intelligence of him that reached his wife, who was waiting the whole morning in painful anxiety for the summons to see him once more, was that he had perished beneath the fatal guillotine, and that she was a widow.



CHAPTER XXXIX.

The Queen is refused Leave to see Clery.—Madame Royale is taken Ill.— Plans are formed for the Queen's Escape by MM. Jarjayes, Toulan, and by the Baron de Batz.—Marie Antoinette refuses to leave her Son.—Illness of the young King.—Overthrow of the Girondins.—Insanity of the Woman Tison.—Kindness of the Queen to her.—Her Son is taken from her, and intrusted to Simon.—His Ill-treatment.—The Queen is removed to the Conciergerie.—She is tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal.—She is condemned.—Her last Letter to the Princess Elizabeth.—Her Death and Character.

Shouts in the streets announced to her and those around her that all was over. All the morning she had alarmed the princesses by the speechless, tearless stupor into which she seemed plunged; but at last she roused herself, and begged to see Clery, who had been with Louis till he left the Temple, and who, therefore, she hoped, might have some last message for her, some last words of affection, some parting gift. And so indeed he had;[1] for the last act of Louis had been to give that faithful servant his seal for the dauphin, and his ring for the queen, with a little packet containing portions of her hair and those of his children which he had been in the habit of wearing. And he had bid him tell them all—"the queen, his dear children, and his sister—that he had promised to see them that morning, but that he had desired to save them the pain of so cruel a separation. How much," he continued, "does it cost me to go without receiving their last embraces! You must bear to them my last farewell."

But even the poor consolation of receiving these sad tokens of unchanged affection was refused to her. The Council refused Clery admittance to her, and seized the little trinkets and the packet of hair. The king's last words never reached her. But a few days afterward, Toulan, one of the commissioners of the Council, who sympathized with her bereavement, found means to send her the ring and seal.[2] Her sister and her daughter were the more anxious that she should see Clery, from the hope that conversation with him might bring on a flood of tears, which would have given her some relief. But her own fortitude was her best support. Miserable as she was, hopeless as she was, it was characteristic of her magnanimous courage that she did not long give way to womanly lamentations. She recollected that she had still duties to perform to the living, to her daughter and sister, and, above all, to her son, now her king, whom, if some happier change of fortune, when the nation should have recovered from its present madness, should replace him on his father's throne, it must be her care to render worthy of such a restoration. She began to apply herself diligently to the work of giving him lessons such as his father had given him, mingling them with the constant references to that father's example, which she never ceased to hold up to him, dwelling with the emphatic exaggeration of lasting affection on his gentleness, his benevolence, his love for his subjects; qualities which, in truth, he had possessed in sufficient abundance, had he but been gifted with the courage and firmness indispensable to secure to his people the benefits he wished them to enjoy.

She had too, for a time, another occupation. The princess royal was, as she had said not long before, of an age to feel keenly the miseries of her parents, and the agitation into which she had been thrown had its natural effect upon her health. Her own language on the subject affords a striking proof how well Marie Antoinette had succeeded in imbuing her with her own forgetfulness of self. As she has recorded the occurrence in her journal, "Fortunately her affliction increased her illness to so serious a degree as to cause a favorable diversion to her mother's despair.[3]"

Youth, however, and a strong constitution prevailed, and the little princess recovered; while other matters also for a time claimed a large share of her mother's attention. For herself, Marie Antoinette felt, as she well might feel, that, come what would, happiness and she were forever parted; and the death to which she never doubted that her enemies destined her could hardly have been anticipated by her as any thing but a relief, if she had thought only of her own feelings. But, again, she had others to think of besides herself—of her children. And she presently learned that others were thinking of her, and were willing (it should rather be said were eager and proud) to encounter any danger, if they might only have the happiness and honor of securing and saving her whom they still regarded as their queen. Two had long been attached to the royal household: the wife of M. de Jarjayes, a gentleman of ancient family in Dauphine, had been one of Marie Antoinette's waiting-women, and he himself, since the fatal expedition to Varennes, had been employed by Louis on several secret missions. From the moment that his royal master was brought before the Convention he had despaired of his life, and had, therefore, bent all his thoughts on the preservation of the queen. M. Turgy, the second, was in a humbler rank of life. He was, as we have seen, one of the officers of the kitchen; but in the household of a king of France even the cooks had pretensions to gentle blood. A third was a man named Toulan, who had originally been a music-seller in Paris, but had subsequently obtained employment under the Municipal Council, and was now a commissioner, with duties which brought him into constant contact with the imprisoned queen. Either he had never in his heart been her enemy, or he had been converted by the dignified fortitude with which she bore her miseries, and by the irresistible fascination which even in prison she still exercised over all whose hearts had not been hardened by fanatical wickedness against every manly or honest feeling; he won the queen's confidence by the most welcome service, which has been already mentioned, of conveying to her her husband's seal and ring. She gave him a letter to recommend him to the confidence of Jarjayes; and their combined ingenuity devised a plan for the escape of the whole family. It was in their favor that a man, who came daily to look to the lamps, usually brought with him his two sons, who nearly matched the size of the royal children. And Jarjayes and Toulan, aided by another of the municipal commissioners, named Lepitre, who had also learned to abhor the indignities practiced on fallen royalty, had prepared full suits of male attire for the queen and princess, with red scarfs and sashes as were worn by the different commissioners, of whom there were too many for all of them to be known to the sentinels; and also clothes for the two children, ill-fitting and shabby, to resemble the dress of the lamp-lighter's boys. Passports, too, by the aid of Lepitre, whose duties lay in the department which issued them, were provided for the whole family; and after careful discussion of the arrangements to be adopted when once the prisoners were clear of the Temple, it was settled that they should take the road to Normandy in three cabriolets, which would be less likely to attract notice than any larger and less ordinary carriage.

The end of February or the beginning of March was fixed for the attempt; but before that time the Government and the people had become greatly disquieted by the operations of the German armies, which were about to receive the powerful assistance of England. Prussia had gained decided advantages on the Rhine. An Austrian army, under the Archduke Charles, was making formidable progress in the Netherlands. Rumors, also, which soon proved to be well founded, of an approaching insurrection in the western departments of France, reached the capital. The vigilance with which the royal prisoners were watched was increased. Information, too, though of no precise character, that they had obtained means of communicating with their partisans who were at liberty, was conveyed to the magistrates. And at last Jarjayes and Toulan were forced to abandon the idea of effecting the escape of the whole family, though they were still confident that they could accomplish that of the queen, which they regarded as the most important, since it was plain that it was she who was in the most immediate danger. Elizabeth, as disinterested as herself, besought her to embrace their offers, and to let her and the children, as being less obnoxious to the Jacobins, take their chance of some subsequent means of escape, or perhaps even mercy.

But such a flight was forbidden alike by Marie Antoinette's sense of duty and by her sense of honor, if indeed the two were ever separated in her mind. Honor forbade her to desert her companions in misery, whose danger might even be increased by the rage of her jailers, exasperated at her escape. Duty to her boy forbade it still more emphatically. As his guardian, she ought not to leave him; as his mother, she could not. And her renunciation of the whole design was conveyed to M. Jarjayes in a letter which did honor alike to both by the noble gratitude which it expressed, and which was long cherished by his heirs as one of their most precious possessions, till it was destroyed, with many another valuable record, when Paris a second time fell under the rule of wretches scarcely less detestable than the Jacobins whom they imitated.[4] It was written by stealth, with a pencil; but no difficulties or hurry, as no acuteness of disappointment or depth of distress, could rob Marie Antoinette of her desire to confer pleasure on others, or of her inimitable gracefulness of expression. Thus she wrote:

"We have had a pleasant dream, that is all. I have gained much by still finding, on this occasion, a new proof of your entire devotion to me. My confidence in you is boundless. And on all occasions you will always find strength of mind and courage in me. But the interest of my son is my sole guide; and, whatever happiness I might find in being out of this place, I can not consent to separate myself from him. In what remains, I thoroughly recognize your attachment to me in all that you said to me yesterday. Rely upon it that I feel the kindness and the force of your arguments as far as my own interest is concerned, and that I feel that the opportunity can not recur. But I could enjoy nothing if I were to leave my children; and this idea prevents me from even regretting my decision.[5]"

And to Toulan she said that "her sole desire was to be reunited to her husband whenever Heaven should decide that her life was no longer necessary to her children." He was greatly afflicted, but he could no longer be of use to her. Her last commission to him was to convey to her eldest brother-in-law, the Count de Provence, her husband's ring and seal, that they might be in safer custody than her own, and that she or her son might reclaim them, if either should ever be at liberty. She gave Toulan also, as a memorial of her gratitude, a small gold box, one of the few trinkets which she still possessed, and which, unhappily, proved a fatal present. In the summer of the next year it was found in his possession, its history was ascertained, and he was sent to the scaffold for the sole offense of having and valuing a relic of his murdered sovereign.

Nor was this the only plan formed for the queen's rescue. The Baron de Batz was a noble of the purest blood in France, seneschal of the Duchy of Albret, and bound by ancient ties of hereditary friendship to the king, as the heir of Henry IV., whose most intimate confidence had been enjoyed by his ancestor. He was still animated by all the antique feelings of chivalrous loyalty, and from the first breaking-out of the troubles of the Revolution he had brought to the service of his sovereign the most absolute devotion, which was rendered doubly useful by an inexhaustible fertility of resource, and a presence of mind that nothing could daunt or perplex. On the fatal 21st of January, he had even formed a project of rescuing Louis on his way to the scaffold, which failed, partly from the timidity of some on whose co-operation he had reckoned, and partly, it is said, from the reluctance of Louis himself to countenance an enterprise which, whatever might be its result, must tend to fierce conflict and bloodshed. Since his sovereign's death he had bent all the energies of his mind to contrive the escape of the queen, and he had so far succeeded that he had enlisted in her cause two men whose posts enabled them to give must effectual resistance: Michonis, who, like Toulan, was one of the commissioners of the Council; and Cortey, a captain of the National Guard, whose company was one of those most frequently on duty at the Temple. It seemed as if all that was necessary to be done was to select a night for the escape when the chief outlets of the Temple should be guarded by Cortey's men; and De Batz, who was at home in every thing that required manoeuvre or contrivance, had provided dresses to disguise the persons of the whole family while in the Temple, and passports and conveyances to secure their escape the moment they were outside the gates. Every thing seemed to promise success, when at the last moment secret intelligence that some plan or other was in agitation was conveyed to the Council. It was not sufficient to enable them to know whom they were to guard against or to arrest, but it was enough to lead them to send down to the Temple another commissioner whose turn of duty did not require his presence there, but whose ferocious surliness of temper pointed him out as one not easily to be either tricked or overborne. He was a cobbler, named Simon, the very same to whose cruel superintendence the little king was presently intrusted.

He came down the very evening that every thing was arranged for the escape of the hapless family. De Batz saw that all was over if he staid, and hesitated for a moment whether he should blow out his brains, and try to accomplish the queen's deliverance by force; but a little reflection showed him that the noise of fire-arms would bring up a crowd of enemies beyond his ability to overpower, and it soon appeared that it would tax all his resources to secure his own escape. He achieved that, hoping still to find some other opportunity of being useful to his royal mistress; but none offered. The Assembly did him the honor to set a price on his head; and at last he thought himself fortunate in being able to save himself. Those who had co-operated with him had worse fortune. Those in authority had no proofs on which to condemn them; but in those days suspicion was a sufficient death-warrant. Michonis and Cortey were suspected, and in the course of the next year a belief that they had at least sympathized with the queen's sorrows sent them both to the scaffold.

With the failure of De Batz every project of escape was abandoned; and a few weeks later the queen congratulated herself that she had refused to flee without her boy, since in the course of May he was seized with illness which for some days threatened to assume a dangerous character. With a brutality which, even in such monsters as the Jacobin rulers of the city, seems almost inconceivable, they refused to allow him the attendance of M. Brunier, the physician who had had the charge of his infancy. It would be a breach of the principles of equality, they said, if any prisoner were permitted to consult any but the prison doctor. But the prison doctor was a man of sense and humanity, as well as of professional skill. He of his own accord sought the advice of Brunier; and the poor child recovered, to be reserved for a fate which, even in the next few weeks, was so foreshadowed, that his own mother must almost have begun to doubt whether his restoration to health had been a blessing to her or to himself.

The spring was marked by important events. Had one so high-minded been capable of exulting in the misfortunes of even her worst enemies, Marie Antoinette might have triumphed in the knowledge that the murderers of her husband were already beginning that work of mutual destruction which in little more than a year sent almost every one of them to the same scaffold on which he had perished. The jealousies which from the first had set the Jacobins and Girondins at variance had reached a height at which they could only be extinguished by the annihilation of one party or the other. They had been partners in crime, and so far were equal in infamy; but the Jacobins were the fiercer and the readier ruffians; and, after nearly two months of vehement debates in the Convention, in which Robespierre denounced the whole body of the Girondin leaders as plotters of treason against the State, and Vergniaud in reply reviled Robespierre as a coward, the Jacobins worked up the mob to rise in their support. The Convention, which hitherto had been divided in something like equality between the two factions, yielded to the terror of a new insurrection, and on the 2d of June ordered the arrest of the Girondin leaders. A very few escaped the search made for them by the officers—Roland, to commit suicide; Barbaroux, to attempt it; Petion and Buzot reached the forests to be devoured by congenial wolves. Lanjuinais,[6] whom the decree of the Convention had identified with them, but who, even in the moments of the greatest excitement, had kept himself clear of their wickedness and crimes, was the only one of the whole body who completely eluded the rage of his enemies. The rest, with Madame Roland, the first prompter of deeds of blood, languished in their well-deserved prisons till the close of autumn, when they all perished on the same scaffold to which they had sent their innocent sovereign.[7]

But it may be that Marie Antoinette never learned their fall; though that if she had, pity would at least have mingled with, if it had not predominated over, her natural exultation, she gave a striking proof in her conduct toward one from whom she had suffered great and constant indignities. From the time that her own attendants were dismissed, the only person appointed to assist Clery in his duties were a man and woman named Tison, chosen for that task on account of their surly and brutal tempers, in which the wife exceeded her husband. Both, and especially the woman, had taken a fiendish pleasure in heaping gratuitous insults on the whole family; but at last the dignity and resignation of the queen awakened remorse in the woman's heart, which presently worked upon her to such a degree that she became mad. In the first days of her frenzy she raved up and down the courtyard declaring herself guilty of the queen's murder. She threw herself at Marie Antoinette's feet, imploring her pardon; and Marie Antoinette not only raised her up with her own hand, and spoke gentle words of forgiveness and consolation to her, but, after she had been removed to a hospital, showed a kind interest in her condition, and amidst all her own troubles found time to write a note to express her anxiety that the invalid should have proper attention.[8]

But very soon a fresh blow was struck at the hapless queen which made her indifferent to all else that could happen, and even to her own fate, of which it may be regarded as the precursor. At ten o'clock on the 3d of July, when the little king was sleeping calmly, his mother having hung a shawl in front of his bed to screen his eyes from the light of the candle by which she and Elizabeth were mending their clothes, the door of their chamber was violently thrown open, and six commissioners entered to announce to the queen that the Convention had ordered the removal of her boy, that he might he committed to the care of a tutor—the tutor named being the cobbler, Simon, whose savageness of disposition was sufficiently attested by the fact of his having been chosen on the recommendation of Marat. At this unexpected blow, Marie Antoinette's fortitude and resignation at last gave way. She wept, she remonstrated, she humbled herself to entreat mercy. She threw her arms around her child, and declared that force itself should not tear him from her. The commissioners were not men likely to feel or show pity. They abused her; they threatened her. She begged them rather to kill her than take her son. They would not kill her, but they swore that they would murder both him and her daughter before her eyes if he were not at once surrendered. There was no more resistance. His aunt and sister took him from the bed and dressed him. His mother, with a voice choked by her sobs, addressed him the last words he was ever to hear from her. "My child, they are taking you from me; never forget the mother who loves you tenderly, and never forget God! Be good, gentle, and honest, and your father will look down on you from heaven and bless you!" "Have you done with this preaching?" said the chief commissioner. "You have abused our patience finely," another added; "the nation is generous, and will take care of his education." But she had fainted, and heard not these words of mocking cruelty. Nothing could touch her further.

If it be not also a mockery to speak of happiness in connection with this most afflicted queen, she was happy in at least not knowing the details of the education which was in store for the noble boy whose birth had apparently secured for him the most splendid of positions, and whose opening virtues seemed to give every promise that he would be worthy of his rank and of his mother. A few days afterward Simon received his instructions from a committee of the Convention, of which Drouet, the postmaster of Ste. Menehould, was the chief. "How was he to treat the wolf cub?" he asked (it was one of the mildest names he ever gave him). "Was he to kill him?" "No." "To poison him?" "No." "What then?" "He was to get rid of him,[9]" and Simon carried out this instruction by the most unremitting ill-treatment of his pupil. He imposed upon him the most menial offices; he made him clean his shoes; he reviled him; he beat him; he compelled him to wear the red cap and jacket which had been adopted as the Revolutionary dress; and one day, when his mother obtained a glimpse of him as he was walking on the leads of the tower to which he had been transferred, it caused her an additional pang to see that he had been stripped of the suit of mourning for his father, and had been clothed in the garments which, in her eyes, were the symbol, of all that was most impious and most loathsome.

All these outrages were but the prelude of the final blow which was to fall on herself; and it shows how great was the fear with which her lofty resolution had always had inspired the Jacobins—fear with such natures being always the greatest exasperation of hatred and the keenest incentive to cruelty—that, when they had resolved to consummate her injuries by her murder, they did not leave her in the Temple as they had left her husband, but removed her to the Conciergerie, which in those days, fitly denominated the Reign of Terror, rarely led but to the scaffold. On the night of the 1st of August (the darkest hours were appropriately chosen for deeds of such darkness) another body of commissioners entered her room, and woke her up to announce that they had come to conduct her to the common prison. Her sister and her daughter begged in vain to be allowed to accompany her. She herself scarcely spoke a word, but dressed herself in silence, made up a small bundle of clothes, and, after a few words of farewell and comfort to those dear ones who had hitherto been her companions, followed her jailers unresistingly, knowing, and for her own sake certainly not grieving, that she was going to meet her doom. As she passed through the outer door it was so low that she struck her head. One of the commissioners had so much decency left as to ask if she was hurt. "No," she replied, "nothing now can hurt me.[10]" Six weeks later, an English gentleman saw her in her dungeon. She was freely exhibited to any one who desired to behold her, on the sole condition—a condition worthy of the monsters who exacted it, and of them alone—that he should show no sign of sympathy or sorrow.[11] "She was sitting on an old worn-out chair made of straw which scarcely supported her weight. Dressed in a gown which had once been white, her attitude bespoke the immensity of her grief, which appeared to have created a kind of stupor, that fortunately rendered her less sensible to the injuries and reproaches which a number of inhuman wretches were continually vomiting forth against her."

Even after all the atrocities and horrors of the last twelve months, the news of the resolution to bring her to a trial, which, it was impossible to doubt, it was intended to follow up by her execution, was received as a shook by the great bulk of the nation, as indeed by all Europe. And Necker's daughter, Madame de Stael, who, as we have seen, had been formerly desirous to aid in her escape, now addressed an energetic and eloquent appeal to the entire people, calling on all persons of all parties, "Republicans, Constitutionalists, and Aristocrats alike, to unite for her preservation." She left unemployed no fervor of entreaty, no depth of argument. She reminded them of the universal admiration which the queen's beauty and grace had formerly excited, when "all France thought itself laid under an obligation by her charms;[12]" of the affection that she had won by her ceaseless acts of beneficence and generosity. She showed the absurdity of denouncing her as "the Austrian"—her who had left Vienna while still little more than a child, and had ever since fixed her heart as well as her home in France. She argued truly that the vagueness, the ridiculousness, the notorious falsehood of the accusations brought against her were in themselves her all-sufficient defense. She showed how useless to every party and in every point of view must be her condemnation. What danger could any one apprehend from restoring to liberty a princess whose every thought was tenderness and pity? She reproached those who now held sway in France with the barbarity of their proscriptions, with governing by terror and by death, with having overthrown a throne only to erect a scaffold in its place; and she declared that the execution of the queen would exceed in foulness all the other crimes that they had yet committed. She was a foreigner, she was a woman; to put her to death would be a violation of all the laws of hospitality as well as of all the laws of nature. The whole universe was interesting itself in the queen's fate. Woe to the nation which knew neither justice nor generosity! Freedom would never be the destiny of such a people.[13]

It had not been from any feeling of compunction or hesitation that those who had her fate in their hands left her so long in her dungeon, but from the absolute impossibility of inventing an accusation against her that should not be utterly absurd and palpably groundless. So difficult did they find their task, that the jailer, a man named Richard, who, when alone, ventured to show sympathy for her miseries, sought to encourage her by the assurance that she would be replaced in the Temple. But Marie Antoinette indulged in no such illusion. She never doubted that her death was resolved on. "No," she replied to his well-meant words of hope, "they have murdered the king; they will kill me in the same way. Never again shall I see my unfortunate children, my tender and virtuous sister." And the tears which her own sufferings could not wring from her flowed freely when she thought of what they were still enduring.

But at last the eagerness for her destruction overcame all difficulties or scruples. The principal articles of the indictment charged her with helping to overthrow the republic and to effect the reestablishment of the throne; with having exerted her influence over her husband to mislead his judgment, to render him unjust to his people, and to induce him to put his veto on laws of which they desired the enactment; with having caused scarcity and famine; with having favored aristocrats; and with having kept up a constant correspondence with her brother, the emperor; and the preamble and the peroration compared her to Messalina, Agrippina, Brunehaut, and Catherine de' Medici—to all the wickedest women of whom ancient or modern history had preserved a record. Had she been guided by her own feelings alone, she would have probably disdained to defend herself against charges whose very absurdity proved that they were only put forward as a pretense for a judgment that had been previously decided on. But still, as ever, she thought of her child, her fair and good son, her "gentle infant," her king. While life lasted she could never wholly relinquish the hope that she might see him once again, perhaps even that some unlooked-for chance (none could be so unexpected as almost every occurrence of the last four years) might restore him and her to freedom, and him to his throne; and for his sake she resolved to exert herself to refute the charges, and at least to establish her right to acquittal and deliverance.

Louis had been tried before the Convention. Marie Antoinette was to be condemned by the, if possible, still more infamous court that had been established in the spring under the name of the Revolutionary Tribunal; and on the 13th of October she was at last conducted before a small sub-committee, and subjected to a private examination. To every question she gave firm and clear answers.[14] She declared that the French people had indeed been deceived, but not by her or by her husband. She affirmed "that the happiness of France always had been, and still was, the first wish of her heart;" and that "she should not even regret the loss of her son's throne, if it led to the real happiness of the country." She was taken back to her cell. The next day the four judges of the tribunal took their seats in the court. Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, a man whose greed of blood stamped him with an especial hideousness, even in those days of universal barbarity, took his seat before them; and eleven men, the greater part of whom had been carefully picked from the very dregs of the people—journeymen carpenters, tailors, blacksmiths, and discharged policemen—were constituted the jury.

Before this tribunal—we will not dignify it with the name of a court of justice—Marie Antoinette, the widow Capet, as she was called in the indictment, was now brought. Clad in deep mourning for her murdered husband, and aged beyond her years by her long series of sorrows, she still preserved the fearless dignity which became her race and rank and character. As she took her place at the bar and cast her eyes around the hall, even the women who thronged the court, debased as they were, were struck by her lofty demeanor. "How proud she is!" was the exclamation, the only sign of nervousness that she gave being that, as those who watched her closely remarked, she moved her fingers up and down on the arm of her chair, as if she had been playing on the harpsichord. The prosecutor brought up witness after witness; some whom it was believed that some ancient hatred, others whom it was expected that some hope of pardon for themselves, might induce to give evidence such as was required. The Count d'Estaing had always been connected with her enemies. Bailly, once Mayor of Paris, as has been seen, had sought a base popularity by the wantonness of the unprovoked insults which he had offered to the king. Michonis knew that his head was imperiled by suspicions of his recent desire to assist her. But one and all testified to her entire innocence of the different charges which they had been brought forward to support, and to the falsehood of the statements contained in the indictment. Her own replies, when any question was addressed to herself, were equally in her favor. When accused of having been the prompter of the political mesures of the king's government, her answer could not be denied to be in accordance with the law: "That she was the wife and subject of the king, and could not be made responsible for his resolutions and actions." When charged with general indifference or hostility to the happiness of the people, she affirmed with equal calmness, as she had previously declared at her private examination, that the welfare of the nation had been, and always was, the first of her wishes.

Once only did a question provoke an answer in any other tone than that of a lofty imperturbable equanimity. She had not known till that moment the depth of her enemies' wickedness, or the cruelty with which her son's mind had been dealt with, worse ten thousand times than the foulest tortures that could be applied to the body. Both her children had been subjected to an examination, in the hope that something might be found to incriminate her in the words of those who might hardly be able to estimate the exact value of their expressions. The princess had been old enough to baffle the utmost malice of her questioners; and the boy had given short and plain replies from which nothing to suit their purpose could be extracted, till they forced him to drink brandy, and, when he was stupefied with drink, compelled him to sign depositions in which he accused both the queen and Elizabeth of having trained him in lessons of vice. At first, horror at so monstrous a charge had sealed the queen's lips; but when she gave no denial, a juryman questioned her on the subject, and insisted on an answer. Then at last Marie Antoinette spoke in sublime indignation. "If I have not answered, it was because nature itself rejects such an accusation made against a mother. I appeal from it to every mother who hears me."

Marie Antoinette had been allowed two counsel, who, perilous as was the duty imposed upon them, cheerfully accepted it as an honor; but it was not intended that their assistance should be more than nominal. She had only known their names on the evening preceding the trial; but when she addressed a letter to the President of the Convention, demanding a postponement of the trial for three days, as indispensable to enable them to master the case, since as yet they had not had time even to read the whole of the indictment, adding that "her duty to her children bound her to leave nothing undone which was requisite for the entire justification of their mother," the request was rudely refused; and all that the lawyers could do was to address eloquent appeals to the judges and jurymen, being utterly unable, on so short notice, to analyze as they deserved the arguments of the prosecutor or the testimony by which he had professed to support them. But before such a tribunal it signified little what was proved or disproved, or what was the strength or weakness of the arguments employed on either side. It was long after midnight of the second day that the trial concluded. The jury at once pronounced the prisoner guilty. The judges as instantly passed sentence of death, and ordered it to be executed the next morning.

It was nearly five in the morning of the 16th of October when the favorite daughter of the great Empress-queen, herself Queen of France, was led from the court, not even to the wretched room which she had occupied for the last ten weeks, but to the condemned cell, never tenanted before by any but the vilest felons. Though greatly exhausted by the length of the proceedings, she had heard the sentence without betraying the slightest emotion by any change of countenance or gesture. On reaching her cell she at once asked for writing materials. They had been withheld from her for more than a year, but they were now brought to her; and with them she wrote her last letter to that princess whom she had long learned to love as a sister of her own, who had shared her sorrows hitherto, and who, at no distant period, was to share the fate which was now awaiting herself.

"16th October, 4.30 A.M.

"It is to you, my sister, that I write for the last time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, for such is only for criminals, but to go and rejoin your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to show the same firmness in my last moments. I am calm, as one is when one's conscience reproaches one with nothing. I feel profound sorrow in leaving my poor children: you know that I only lived for them and for you, my good and tender sister. You who out of love have sacrificed everything to be with us, in what a position do I leave you! I have learned from the proceedings at my trial that my daughter was separated from you. Alas! poor child; I do not venture to write to her; she would not receive my letter. I do not even know whether this will reach you. Do you receive my blessing for both of them. I hope that one day when they are older they may be able to rejoin you, and to enjoy to the full your tender care. Let them both think of the lesson which I have never ceased to impress upon them, that the principles and the exact performance of their duties are the chief foundation of life; and then mutual affection and confidence in one another will constitute its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to aid her brother by the advice which her greater experience and her affection may inspire her to give him. And let my son in his turn render to his sister all the care and all the services which affection can inspire. Let them, in short, both feel that, in whatever positions they may be placed, they will never be truly happy but through their union. Let them follow our example. In our own misfortunes how much comfort has our affection for one another afforded us! And, in times of happiness, we have enjoyed that doubly from being able to share it with a friend; and where can one find friends more tender and more united than in one's own family? Let my son never forget the last words of his father, which I repeat emphatically; let him never seek to avenge our deaths. I have to speak to you of one thing which is very painful to my heart, I know how much pain the child must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it.[15] It will come to pass one day, I hope, that he will better feel the value of your kindness and of your tender affection for both of them. It remains to confide to you my last thoughts. I should have wished to write them at the beginning of my trial; but, besides that they did not leave me any means of writing, events have passed so rapidly that I really have not had time.

"I die in the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion, that of my fathers, that in which I was brought up, and which I have always professed. Having no spiritual consolation to look for, not even knowing whether there are still in this place any priests of that religion[16] (and indeed the place where I am would expose them to too much danger if they were to enter it but once), I sincerely implore pardon of God for all the faults which I may have committed during my life. I trust that, in his goodness, he will mercifully accept my last prayers, as well as those which I have for a long time addressed to him, to receive my soul into his mercy. I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them.

"Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell! farewell! I must now occupy myself with my spiritual duties, as I am not free in my actions. Perhaps they will bring me a priest; but I here protest that I will not say a word to him, but that I will treat him as a person absolutely unknown."

Her forebodings were realized; her letter never reached Elizabeth, but was carried to Fouquier, who placed it among his special records. Yet, if in those who had thus wrought the writer's destruction there had been one human feeling, it might have been awakened by the simple dignity and unaffected pathos of this sad farewell. No line that she ever wrote was more thoroughly characteristic of her. The innocence, purity, and benevolence of her soul shine through every sentence. Even in that awful moment she never lost her calm, resigned fortitude, nor her consideration for others. She speaks of and feels for her children, for her friends, but never for herself. And it is equally characteristic of her that, even in her own hopeless situation, she still can cherish hope for others, and can look forward to the prospect of those whom she loves being hereafter united in freedom and happiness. She thought, it may be, that her own death would be the last sacrifice that her enemies would require. And for even her enemies and murderers she had a word of pardon, and could address a message of mercy for them to her son, who, she trusted, might yet some day have power to show that mercy she enjoined, or to execute the vengeance which with her last breath she deprecated.

She threw herself on her bed and fell asleep. At seven she was roused by the executioner. The streets were already thronged with a fierce and sanguinary mob, whose shouts of triumph were so vociferous that she asked one of her jailers whether they would tear her to pieces. She was assured that, as he expressed it, they would do her no harm. And indeed the Jacobins themselves would have protected her from the populace, so anxious were they to heap on her every indignity that would render death more terrible. Louis had been allowed to quit the Temple in his carriage. Marie Antoinette was to be drawn from the prison to the scaffold in a common cart, seated on a bare plank; the executioner by her side, holding the cords with which her hands were already bound. With a refinement of barbarity, those who conducted the procession made it halt more than once, that the people might gaze upon her, pointing her out to the mob with words and gestures of the vilest insult. She heard them not; her thoughts were with God: her lips were uttering nothing but prayers. Once for a moment, as she passed in sight of the Tuileries, she was observed to cast an agonized look toward its towers, remembering, perhaps, how reluctantly she had quit it fourteen months before. It was midday before the cart reached the scaffold. As she descended, she trod on the executioner's foot. It might seem to have been ordained that her very last words might be words of courtesy. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "I did not do it on purpose;" and she added, "make haste." In a few moments all was over.

Her body was thrown into a pit in the common cemetery, and covered with quicklime to insure its entire destruction. When, more than twenty years afterward, her brother-in-law was restored to the throne, and with pious affection desired to remove her remains and those of her husband to the time-honored resting-place of their royal ancestors at St. Denis, no remains of her who had once been the admiration of all beholders could be found beyond some fragments of clothing, and one or two bones, among which the faithful memory of Chateaubriand believed that he recognized the mouth whose sweet smile had been impressed on his memory since the day on which it acknowledged his loyalty on his first presentation, while still a boy, at Versailles.

Thus miserably perished, by a death fit only for the vilest of criminals, Marie Antoinette, the daughter of one sovereign, the wife of another, who had never wronged or injured one human being. No one was ever more richly endowed with all the charms which render woman attractive, or with all the virtues that make her admirable. Even in her earliest years, her careless and occasionally undignified levity was but the joyous outpouring of a pure innocence of heart that, as it meant no evil, suspected none; while it was ever blended with a kindness and courtesy which sprung from a genuine benevolence. As queen, though still hardly beyond girlhood when she ascended the throne, she set herself resolutely to work by her admonitions, and still more effectually by her example, to purify a court of which for centuries the most shameless profligacy had been the rule and boast; discountenancing vice and impiety by her marked reprobation, and reserving all her favor and protection for genius and patriotism, and honor and virtue. Surrounded at a later period by unexampled dangers and calamities, she showed herself equal to every vicissitude of fortune, and superior to its worst frowns. If her judgment occasionally erred, it was in cases where alternatives of evil were alone offered to her choice, and in which it is even now scarcely possible to decide what course would have been wiser or safer than that which she adopted. And when at last the long conflict was terminated by the complete victory of her combined enemies— when she, with her husband and her children, was bereft not only of power, but even of freedom, and was a prisoner in the hands of those whose unalterable object was her destruction—she bore her accumulated miseries with a serene resignation, an intrepid fortitude, a true heroism of soul, of which the history of the world does not afford a brighter example.