The Historic Court Memoirs of France, complete

Part 55 out of 62

of each of the right sections; a reserve with cannon was stationed at the
Tuileries, and strong detachments patroled the streets and cleared the
road of all loiterers. The trees that lined the boulevards, the doors
and windows of the houses, were alive with gazers, and all eyes were
fixed on the King. He was much changed since his people last beheld him.
The beard he had been compelled to grow after his razors were taken from
him covered cheeks, lips, and chin with light-coloured hair, which
concealed the melancholy expression of his mouth; he had become thin, and
his garments hung loosely on him; but his manner was perfectly collected
and calm, and he recognised and named to the Mayor the various quarters
through which he passed. On arriving at the Feuillans he was taken to a
room to await the orders of the Assembly.

It was about half-past two when the King appeared at the bar. The Mayor
and Generaux Santerre and Wittengoff were at his side. Profound silence
pervaded the Assembly. All were touched by the King's dignity and the
composure of his looks under so great a reverse of fortune. By nature he
had been formed rather to endure calamity with patience than to contend
against it with energy. The approach of death could not disturb his
serenity.

"Louis, you may be seated," said Barere. "Answer the questions that
shall be put to you." The King seated himself and listened to the
reading of the 'acte enonciatif', article by article. All the faults
of the Court were there enumerated and imputed to Louis XVI. personally.
He was charged with the interruption of the sittings of the 20th of June,
1789, with the Bed of Justice held on the 23d of the same month, the
aristocratic conspiracy thwarted by the insurrection of the 14th of July,
the entertainment of the Life Guards, the insults offered to the national
cockade, the refusal to sanction the Declaration of Rights, as well as
several constitutional articles; lastly, all the facts which indicated a
new conspiracy in October, and which were followed by the scenes of the
5th and 6th; the speeches of reconciliation which had succeeded all these
scenes, and which promised a change that was not sincere; the false oath
taken at the Federation of the 14th of July; the secret practices of
Talon and Mirabeau to effect a counter-revolution; the money spent in
bribing a great number of deputies; the assemblage of the "knights of
the dagger" on the 28th of February, 1791; the flight to Varennes; the
fusilade of the Champ de Mars; the silence observed respecting the Treaty
of Pilnitz; the delay in the promulgation of the decree which
incorporated Avignon with France; the commotions at Nimes, Montauban,
Mende, and Jales; the continuance of their pay to the emigrant Life
Guards and to the disbanded Constitutional Guard; the insufficiency of
the armies assembled on the frontiers; the refusal to sanction the decree
for the camp of twenty thousand men; the disarming of the fortresses; the
organisation of secret societies in the interior of Paris; the review of
the Swiss and the garrison of the palace on the 10th August; the
summoning the Mayor to the Tuileries; and lastly, the effusion of blood
which had resulted from these military dispositions. After each article
the President paused, and said, "What have you to answer?" The King, in
a firm voice, denied some of the facts, imputed others to his ministers,
and always appealed to the constitution, from which he declared he had
never deviated. His answers were very temperate, but on the charge, "You
spilt the blood of the people on the 10th of August," he exclaimed, with
emphasis, "No, monsieur, no; it was not I."

All the papers on which the act of accusation was founded were then shown
to the King, and he disavowed some of them and disputed the existence of
the iron chest; this produced a bad impression, and was worse than
useless, as the fact had been proved.

[A secret closet which the King had directed to be constructed in a
wall in the Tuileries. The door was of iron, whence it was
afterwards known by the name of the iron chest. See Thiers, and
Scott.]

Throughout the examination the King showed great presence of mind.
He was careful in his answers never to implicate any members of the
constituent, and legislative Assemblies; many who then sat as his judges
trembled lest he should betray them. The Jacobins beheld with dismay the
profound impression made on the Convention by the firm but mild demeanour
of the sovereign. The most violent of the party proposed that he should
be hanged that very night; a laugh as of demons followed the proposal
from the benches of the Mountain, but the majority, composed of the
Girondists and the neutrals, decided that he should be formally tried.

After the examination Santerre took the King by the arm and led him back
to the waiting-room of the Convention, accompanied by Chambon and
Chaumette. Mental agitation and the length of the proceedings had
exhausted him, and he staggered from weakness. Chaumette inquired if he
wished for refreshment, but the King refused it. A moment after, seeing
a grenadier of the escort offer the Procureur de la Commune half a small
loaf, Louis XVI. approached and asked him, in a whisper, for a piece.

"Ask aloud for what you want," said Chaumette, retreating as though he
feared being suspected of pity.

"I asked for a piece of your bread," replied the King.

"Divide it with me," said Chaumette. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I
had a root I would give you half."--[Lamartine's "History of the
Girondists," edit. 1870, vol. ii., p. 313.]

Soon after six in the evening the King returned to the Temple. "He
seemed tired," says Clery, simply, "and his first wish was to be led to
his family. The officers refused, on the plea that they had no orders.
He insisted that at least they should be informed of his return, and this
was promised him. The King ordered me to ask for his supper at half-past
eight. The intervening hours he employed in his usual reading,
surrounded by four municipals. When I announced that supper was served,
the King asked the commissaries if his family could not come down. They
made no reply. 'But at least,' the King said, 'my son will pass the
night in my room, his bed being here?' The same silence. After supper
the King again urged his wish to see his family. They answered that they
must await the decision of the Convention. While I was undressing him
the King said, 'I was far from expecting all the questions they put to
me.' He lay down with perfect calmness. The order for my removal during
the night was not executed." On the King's return to the Temple being
known, "my mother asked to see him instantly," writes Madame Royale.
"She made the same request even to Chambon, but received no answer. My
brother passed the night with her; and as he had no bed, she gave him
hers, and sat up all the night in such deep affliction that we were
afraid to leave her; but she compelled my aunt and me to go to bed. Next
day she again asked to see my father, and to read the newspapers, that
she might learn the course of the trial. She entreated that if she was
to be denied this indulgence, his children, at least, might see him. Her
requests were referred to the Commune. The newspapers were refused; but
my brother and I were to be allowed to see my father on condition of
being entirely separated from my mother. My father replied that, great
as his happiness was in seeing his children, the important business which
then occupied him would not allow of his attending altogether to his son,
and that his daughter could not leave her mother."

[During their last interview Madame Elisabeth had given Clery one of
her handkerchiefs, saying, "You shall keep it so long as my brother
continues well; if he becomes ill, send it to me among my nephew's
things."]

The Assembly having, after a violent debate, resolved that Louis XVI.
should have the aid of counsel, a deputation was sent to the Temple to
ask whom he would choose. The King named Messieurs Target and Tronchet.
The former refused his services on the ground that he had discontinued
practice since 1785; the latter complied at once with the King's request;
and while the Assembly was considering whom to, nominate in Target's
place, the President received a letter from the venerable Malesherbes,

[Christian Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, an eminent French
statesman, son of the Chancellor of France, was born at Paris in
1721. In 1750 he succeeded his father as President of the Court of
Aids, and was also made superintendent of the press. On the
banishment of the Parliaments and the suppression of the Court of
Aids, Malesherbes was exiled to his country-seat. In 1775 he was
appointed Minister of State. On the decree of the Convention for
the King's trial, he emerged from his retreat to become the
voluntary advocate of his sovereign. Malesherbes was guillotined in
1794, and almost his whole family were extirpated by their merciless
persecutors.]

then seventy years old, and "the most respected magistrate in France," in
the course of which he said: "I have been twice called to be counsel for
him who was my master, in times when that duty was coveted by every one.
I owe him the same service now that it is a duty which many people deem
dangerous. If I knew any possible means of acquainting him with my
desires, I should not take the liberty of addressing myself to you."
Other citizens made similar proposals, but the King, being made
acquainted with them by a deputation from the Commune, while expressing
his gratitude for all the offers, accepted only that of Malesherbes.

[The Citoyenne Olympia Degonges, calling herself a free and loyal
Republican without spot or blame, and declaring that the cold and
selfish cruelty of Target had inflamed her heroism and roused her
sensibility, asked permission to assist M, de Malesherbes in
defending the King. The Assembly passed to the order of the day on
this request.--BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, "Annals," edit. 1802, vol,
viii., p. 254.]

On 14th December M. Tronchet was allowed to confer with the King, and
later in the same day M. de Malesherbes was admitted to the Tower. "The
King ran up to this worthy old man, whom he clasped in his arms," said
Clery, "and the former minister melted into tears at the sight of his
master."

[According to M. de Hue, "The first time M. de Malesherbes entered
the Temple, the King clasped him in his arms and said, 'Ah, is it
you, my friend? You fear not to endanger your own life to save
mine; but all will be useless. They will bring me to the scaffold.
No matter; I shall gain my cause if I leave an unspotted memory
behind me.'"]

Another deputation brought the King the Act of Accusation and the
documents relating to it, numbering more than a hundred, and taking from
four o'clock till midnight to read. During this long process the King
had refreshments served to the deputies, taking nothing himself till they
had left, but considerately reproving Clery for not having supped. From
the 14th to the 26th December the King saw his counsel and their
colleague M. de Size every day. At this time a means of communication
between the royal family and the King was devised: a man named Turgi, who
had been in the royal kitchen, and who contrived to obtain employment in
the Temple, when conveying the meals of the royal family to their
apartments, or articles he had purchased for them, managed to give Madame
Elisabeth news of the King. Next day, the Princess, when Turgi was
removing the dinner, slipped into his hand a bit of paper on which she
had pricked with a pin a request for a word from her brother's own hand.
Turgi gave this paper to Clery, who conveyed it to the King the same
evening; and he, being allowed writing materials while preparing his
defence, wrote Madame Elisabeth a short note. An answer was conveyed in
a ball of cotton, which Turgi threw under Clery's bed while passing the
door of his room. Letters were also passed between the Princess's room
and that of Clery, who lodged beneath her, by means of a string let down
and drawn up at night. This communication with his family was a great
comfort to the King, who, nevertheless, constantly cautioned his faithful
servant. "Take care," he would say kindly, "you expose yourself too
much."

[The King's natural benevolence was constantly shown while in the
Temple. His own dreadful position never prevented him from sympathy
with the smaller troubles of others. A servant in the Temple named
Marchand, the father of a family, was robbed of two hundred francs,
--his wages for two months. The King observed his distress, asked
its cause, and gave Clery the amount to be handed to Marchand, with
a caution not to speak of it to any one, and, above all, not to
thank the King, lest it should injure him with his employers.]

During his separation from his family the King refused to go into the
garden. When it was proposed to him he said, "I cannot make up my mind
to go out alone; the walk was agreeable to me only when I shared it with
my family." But he did not allow himself to dwell on painful
reflections. He talked freely to the municipals on guard, and surprised
them by his varied and practical knowledge of their trades, and his
interest in their domestic affairs. On the 19th December the King's
breakfast was served as usual; but, being a fast-day, he refused to take
anything. At dinner-time the King said to Clery, "Fourteen years ago you
were up earlier than you were to-day; it is the day my daughter was born-
-today, her birthday," he repeated, with tears, "and to be prevented from
seeing her!" Madame Royale had wished for a calendar; the King ordered
Clery to buy her the "Almanac of the Republic," which had replaced the
"Court Almanac," and ran through it, marking with a pencil many names.

"On Christmas Day," Says Clery, "the King wrote his will."

[Madame Royale says: "On the 26th December, St. Stephen's Day, my
father made his will, because he expected to be assassinated that
day on his way to the bar of the Convention. He went thither,
nevertheless, with his usual calmness."--"Royal Memoirs," p. 196.]

On the 26th December, 1792, the King appeared a second time before the
Convention. M. de Seze, labouring night and day, had completed his
defence. The King insisted on excluding from it all that was too
rhetorical, and confining it to the mere discussion of essential points.

[When the pathetic peroration of M, de Seze was read to the King,
the evening before it was delivered to the Assembly, "I have to
request of you," he said, "to make a painful sacrifice; strike out
of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear
before such judges, and show my entire innocence; I will not move
their feelings.--"LACRETELLE.]

At half-past nine in the morning the whole armed force was in motion to
conduct him from the Temple to the Feuillans, with the same precautions
and in the same order as had been observed on the former occasion.
Riding in the carriage of the Mayor, he conversed, on the way, with the
same composure as usual, and talked of Seneca, of Livy, of the hospitals.
Arrived at the Feuillans, he showed great anxiety for his defenders; he
seated himself beside them in the Assembly, surveyed with great composure
the benches where his accusers and his judges sat, seemed to examine
their faces with the view of discovering the impression produced by the
pleading of M. de Seze, and more than once conversed smilingly with
Tronchet and Malesherbes. The Assembly received his defence in sullen
silence, but without any tokens of disapprobation.

Being afterwards conducted to an adjoining room with his counsel, the
King showed great anxiety about M. de Seze, who seemed fatigued by the
long defence. While riding back to the Temple he conversed with his
companions with the same serenity as he had shown on leaving it.

No sooner had the King left the hall of the Convention than a violent
tumult arose there. Some were for opening the discussion. Others,
complaining of the delays which postponed the decision of this process,
demanded the vote immediately, remarking that in every court, after the
accused had been heard, the judges proceed to give their opinion.
Lanjuinais had from the commencement of the proceedings felt an
indignation which his impetuous disposition no longer suffered him to
repress. He darted to the tribune, and, amidst the cries excited by his
presence, demanded the annulling of the proceedings altogether.
He exclaimed that the days of ferocious men were gone by, that the
Assembly ought not to be so dishonoured as to be made to sit in judgment
on Louis XVI., that no authority in France had that right, and the
Assembly in particular had no claim to it; that if it resolved to act as
a political body, it could do no more than take measures of safety
against the ci-devant King; but that if it was acting as a court of
justice it was overstepping all principles, for it was subjecting the
vanquished to be tried by the conquerors, since most of the present
members had declared themselves the conspirators of the 10th of August.
At the word "conspirators" a tremendous uproar arose on all aides. Cries
of "Order!"--"To the Abbaye!"--"Down with the Tribune!" were heard.
Lanjuinais strove in vain to justify the word "conspirators," saying that
he meant it to be taken in a favourable sense, and that the 10th of
August was a glorious conspiracy. He concluded by declaring that he
would rather die a thousand deaths than condemn, contrary to all laws,
even the most execrable of tyrants.

A great number of speakers followed, and the confusion continually
increased. The members, determined not to hear any more, mingled
together, formed groups, abused and threatened one another. After a
tempest of an hour's duration, tranquillity was at last restored; and the
Assembly, adopting the opinion of those who demanded the discussion on
the trial of Louis XVI., declared that it was opened, and that it should
be continued, to the exclusion of all other business, till sentence
should be passed.

The discussion was accordingly resumed on the 27th, and there was a
constant succession of speakers from the 28th to the 31st. Vergniaud at
length ascended the tribune for the first time, and an extraordinary
eagerness was manifested to hear the Girondists express their sentiments
by the lips of their greatest orator.

The speech of Vergniaud produced a deep impression on all his hearers.
Robespierre was thunderstruck by his earnest and, persuasive eloquence.
Vergniaud, however, had but shaken, not convinced, the Assembly, which
wavered between the two parties. Several members were successively
heard, for and against the appeal to the people. Brissot, Gensonne,
Petion, supported it in their turn. One speaker at length had a decisive
influence on the question. Barere, by his suppleness, and his cold and
evasive eloquence, was the model and oracle of the centre. He spoke at
great length on the trial, reviewed it in all its bearings--of facts, of
laws, and of policy--and furnished all those weak minds, who only wanted
specious reasons for yielding, with motives for the condemnation of the
King. From that moment the unfortunate King was condemned. The
discussion lasted till the 7th, and nobody would listen any longer to the
continual repetition of the same facts and arguments. It was therefore
declared to be closed without opposition, but the proposal of a fresh
adjournment excited a commotion among the most violent, and ended in a
decree which fixed the 14th of January for putting the questions to the
vote.

Meantime the King did not allow the torturing suspense to disturb his
outward composure, or lessen his kindness to those around him. On the
morning after his second appearance at the bar of the Convention, the
commissary Vincent, who had undertaken secretly to convey to the Queen
a copy of the King's printed defence, asked for something which had
belonged to him, to treasure as a relic; the King took off his neck
handkerchief and gave it him; his gloves he bestowed on another
municipal, who had made the same request. "On January 1st," says Clery,
"I approached the King's bed and asked permission to offer him my warmest
prayers for the end of his misfortunes. 'I accept your good wishes with
affection,' he replied, extending his hand to me. As soon as he had
risen, he requested a municipal to go and inquire for his family, and
present them his good wishes for the new year. The officers were moved
by the tone in which these words, so heartrending considering the
position of the King, were pronounced . . . . The correspondence
between their Majesties went on constantly. The King being informed that
Madame Royale was ill, was very uneasy for some days. The Queen, after
begging earnestly, obtained permission for M. Brunnier, the medical
attendant of the royal children, to come to the Temple. This seemed to
quiet him."

The nearer the moment which was to decide the King's fate approached, the
greater became the agitation in, Paris. "A report was circulated that
the atrocities of September were to be repeated there, and the prisoners
and their relatives beset the deputies with supplications that they would
snatch them from destruction. The Jacobins, on their part, alleged that
conspiracies were hatching in all quarters to save Louis XVI. from
punishment, and to restore royalty. Their anger, excited by delays and
obstacles, assumed a more threatening aspect; and the two parties thus
alarmed one another by supposing that each harboured sinister designs."

On the 14th of January the Convention called for the order of the day,
being the final judgment of Louis XVI.

"The sitting of the Convention which concluded the trial," says Hazlitt,
"lasted seventy-two hours. It might naturally be supposed that silence,
restraint, a sort of religious awe, would have pervaded the scene. On
the contrary, everything bore the marks of gaiety, dissipation, and the
most grotesque confusion. The farther end of the hall was converted into
boxes, where ladies, in a studied deshabille, swallowed ices, oranges,
liqueurs, and received the salutations of the members who went and came,
as on ordinary occasions. Here the doorkeepers on the Mountain side
opened and shut the boxes reserved for the mistresses of the Duc
d'Orleans; and there, though every sound of approbation or disapprobation
was strictly forbidden, you heard the long and indignant 'Ha, ha's!' of
the mother-duchess, the patroness of the bands of female Jacobins,
whenever her ears were not loudly greeted with the welcome sounds of
death. The upper gallery, reserved for the people, was during the whole
trial constantly full of strangers of every description, drinking wine as
in a tavern.

"Bets were made as to the issue of the trial in all the neighbouring
coffee-houses. Ennui, impatience, disgust sat on almost every
countenance. The figures passing and repassing, rendered more ghastly by
the pallid lights, and who in a slow, sepulchral voice pronounced only
the word--Death; others calculating if they should have time to go to
dinner before they gave their verdict; women pricking cards with pins in
order to count the votes; some of the deputies fallen asleep, and only
waking up to give their sentence,--all this had the appearance rather of
a hideous dream than of a reality."

The Duc d'Orleans, when called on to give his vote for the death of his
King and relation, walked with a faltering step, and a face paler than
death itself, to the appointed place, and there read these words:
"Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have
resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for
death!" Important as the accession of the first Prince of the blood was
to the Terrorist faction, his conduct in this instance was too obviously
selfish and atrocious not to excite a general feeling of indignation; the
agitation of the Assembly became extreme; it seemed as if by this single
vote the fate of the monarch was irrevocably sealed.

The President having examined the register, the result of the scrutiny
was proclaimed as follows

Against an appeal to the people........... 480
For an appeal to the people............... 283

Majority for final judgment............... 197

The President having announced that he was about to declare the result of
the scrutiny, a profound silence ensued, and he then gave in the
following declaration: that, out of 719 votes, 366 were for DEATH, 319
were for imprisonment during the war, two for perpetual imprisonment,
eight for a suspension of the execution of the sentence of death until
after the expulsion of the family of the Bourbons, twenty-three were for
not putting him to death until the French territory was invaded by any
foreign power, and one was for a sentence of death, but with power of
commutation of the punishment.

After this enumeration the President took off his hat, and, lowering his
voice, said: "In consequence of this expression of opinion I declare that
the punishment pronounced by the National Convention against Louis Capet
is DEATH!"

Previous to the passing of the sentence the President announced on the
part of the Foreign Minister the receipt of a letter from the Spanish
Minister relative to that sentence. The Convention, however, refused to
hear it. [It will be remembered that a similar remonstrance was
forwarded by the English Government.]

M. de Malesherbes, according to his promise to the King, went to the
Temple at nine o'clock on the morning of the 17th?.

[Louis was fully prepared for his fate. During the calling of the
votes he asked M. de Malesherbes, "Have you not met near the Temple
the White Lady?"--" What do you mean?" replied he. "Do you not
know," resumed the King with a smile, "that when a prince of our
house is about to die, a female dressed in white is seen wandering
about the palace? My friends," added he to his defenders, "I am
about to depart before you for the land of the just, but there, at
least, we shall be reunited." In fact, his Majesty's only
apprehension seemed to be for his family.--ALISON.]

"All is lost," he said to Clery. "The King is condemned." The King, who
saw him arrive, rose to receive him.

[When M. de Malesherbes went to the Temple to announce the result of
the vote, he found Louis with his forehead resting on his hands, and
absorbed in a deep reverie. Without inquiring concerning his fate,
he said: "For two hours I have been considering whether, during my
whole reign, I have voluntarily given any cause of complaint to my
subjects; and with perfect sincerity I declare that I deserve no
reproach at their hands, and that I have never formed a wish but for
their happiness." LACRETELLE.]

M. de Malesherbes, choked by sobs, threw himself at his feet. The King
raised him up and affectionately embraced him. When he could control his
voice, De Malesherbes informed the King of the decree sentencing him to
death; he made no movement of surprise or emotion, but seemed only
affected by the distress of his advocate, whom he tried to comfort.

On the 20th of January, at two in the afternoon, Louis XVI. was awaiting
his advocates, when he heard the approach of a numerous party. He
stopped with dignity at the door of his apartment, apparently unmoved:
Garat then told him sorrowfully that he was commissioned to communicate
to him the decrees of the Convention. Grouvelle, secretary of the
Executive Council, read them to him. The first declared Louis XVI.
guilty of treason against the general safety of the State; the second
condemned him to death; the third rejected any appeal to the people; and
the fourth and last ordered his execution in twenty-four hours. Louis,
looking calmly round, took the paper from Grouvelle, and read Garat a
letter, in which he demanded from the Convention three days to prepare
for death, a confessor to assist him in his last moments, liberty to see
his family, and permission for them to leave France. Garat took the
letter, promising to submit it immediately to the Convention.

Louis XVI. then went back into his room with great composure, ordered his
dinner, and ate as usual. There were no knives on the table, and his
attendants refused to let him have any. "Do they think me so cowardly,"
he exclaimed, "as to lay violent hands on myself? I am innocent, and I
am not afraid to die."

The Convention refused the delay, but granted some other demands which he
had made. Garat sent for Edgeworth de Firmont, the ecclesiastic whom
Louis XVI. had chosen, and took him in his own carriage to the Temple.
M. Edgeworth, on being ushered into the presence of the King, would have
thrown himself at his feet, but Louis instantly raised him, and both shed
tears of emotion. He then, with eager curiosity, asked various questions
concerning the clergy of France, several bishops, and particularly the
Archbishop of Paris, requesting him to assure the latter that he died
faithfully attached to his communion.--The clock having struck eight, he
rose, begged M. Edgeworth to wait, and retired with emotion, saying that
he was going to see his family. The municipal officers, unwilling to
lose sight of the King, even while with his family, had decided that he
should see them in the dining-room, which had a glass door, through which
they could watch all his motions without hearing what he said. At half-
past eight the door opened. The Queen, holding the Dauphin by the hand,
Madame Elisabeth, and Madame Royale rushed sobbing into the arms of Louis
XVI. The door was closed, and the municipal officers, Clery, and M.
Edgeworth placed themselves behind it. During the first moments, it was
but a scene of confusion and despair. Cries and lamentations prevented
those who were on the watch from distinguishing anything. At length the
conversation became more calm, and the Princesses, still holding the King
clasped in their arms, spoke with him in a low tone. "He related his
trial to my mother," says Madame Royale, "apologising for the wretches
who had condemned him. He told her that he would not consent to any
attempt to save him, which might excite disturbance in the country.
He then gave my brother some religious advice, and desired him, above
all, to forgive those who caused his death; and he gave us his blessing.
My mother was very desirous that the whole family should pass the night
with my father, but he opposed this, observing to her that he much needed
some hours of repose and quiet." After a long conversation, interrupted
by silence and grief, the King put an end to the painful meeting,
agreeing to see his family again at eight the next morning. "Do you
promise that you will?" earnestly inquired the Princesses. "Yes, yes,"
sorrowfully replied the King.

["But when we were gone," says his daughter, "he requested that we
might not be permitted to return, as our presence afflicted him too
much."]

At this moment the Queen held him by one arm, Madame Elisabeth by the
other, while Madame Royale clasped him round the waist, and the Dauphin
stood before him, with one hand in that of his mother. At the moment of
retiring Madame Royale fainted; she was carried away, and the King
returned to M. Edgeworth deeply depressed by this painful interview.
The King retired to rest about midnight; M. Edgeworth threw himself upon
a bed, and Clery took his place near the pillow of his master.

Next morning, the 21st of January, at five, the King awoke, called Clery,
and dressed with great calmness. He congratulated himself on having
recovered his strength by sleep. Clery kindled a fire,, and moved a
chest of drawers, out of which he formed an altar. M. Edgeworth put on
his pontifical robes, and began to celebrate mass. Clery waited on him,
and the King listened, kneeling with the greatest devotion. He then
received the communion from the hands of M. Edgeworth, and after mass
rose with new vigour, and awaited with composure the moment for going to
the scaffold. He asked for scissors that Clery might cut his hair; but
the Commune refused to trust him with a pair.

At this moment the drums were beating in the capital. All who belonged
to the armed sections repaired to their company with complete submission.
It was reported that four or five hundred devoted men, were to make a
dash upon the carriage, and rescue the King. The Convention, the
Commune, the Executive Council, and the Jacobins were sitting. At eight.
in the morning, Santerre, with a deputation from the Commune, the
department, and the criminal tribunal, repaired to the Temple. Louis
XVI., on hearing them arrive, rose and prepared to depart. He desired
Clery to transmit his last farewell to his wife, his sister, and his
children; he gave him a sealed packet, hair, and various trinkets, with
directions to deliver these articles to them.

[In the course of the morning the King said to me: "You will give
this seal to my son and this ring to the Queen, and assure her that
it is with pain I part with it. This little packet contains the
hair of all my family; you will give her that, too. Tell the Queen,
my dear sister, and my children, that, although I promised to see
them again this morning, I have resolved to spare them the pang of
so cruel a separation. Tell them how much it costs me to go away
without receiving their embraces once more!" He wiped away some
tears, and then added, in the most mournful accents, "I charge you
to bear them my last farewell."--CLERY.]

He then clasped his hand and thanked him for his services. After this he
addressed himself to one of the municipal officers, requesting him to
transmit his last will to the Commune. This officer, who had formerly
been a priest, and was named Jacques Roux, brutally replied that his
business was to conduct him to execution, and not to perform his
commissions. Another person took charge of it, and Louis, turning
towards the party, gave with firmness the signal for starting.

Officers of gendarmerie were placed on the front seat of the carriage.
The King and M. Edgeworth occupied the back. During the ride, which was
rather long, the King read in M. Edgeworth's breviary the prayers for
persons at the point of death; the two gendarmes were astonished at his
piety and tranquil resignation. The vehicle advanced slowly, and amidst
universal silence. At the Place de la Revolution an extensive space had
been left vacant about the scaffold. Around this space were planted
cannon; the most violent of the Federalists were stationed about the
scaffold; and the vile rabble, always ready to insult genius, virtue, and
misfortune, when a signal is given it to do so, crowded behind the ranks
of the Federalists, and alone manifested some outward tokens of
satisfaction.

At ten minutes past ten the carriage stopped. Louis XVI., rising
briskly, stepped out into the Place. Three executioners came up; he
refused their assistance, and took off his clothes himself. But,
perceiving that they were going to bind his hands, he made a movement of
indignation, and seemed ready to resist. M. Edgeworth gave him a last
look, and said, "Suffer this outrage, as a last resemblance to that God
who is about to be your reward." At these words the King suffered
himself to be bound and conducted to the scaffold. All at once Louis
hurriedly advanced to address the people. "Frenchmen," said he, in a
firm voice, "I die innocent of the crimes which are imputed to me; I
forgive the authors of my death, and I pray that my blood may not fall
upon France." He would have continued, but the drums were instantly
ordered to beat: their rolling drowned his voice; the executioners laid
hold of him, and M. Edgeworth took his leave in these memorable words:
"Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!" As soon as the blood flowed,
furious wretches dipped their pikes and handkerchiefs in it, then
dispersed throughout Paris, shouting "Vive la Republique! Vive la
Nation!" and even went to the gates of the Temple to display brutal and
factious joy.

[The body of Louis was, immediately after the execution, removed to
the ancient cemetery of the Madeleine. Large quantities of
quicklime were thrown into the grave, which occasioned so rapid a
decomposition that, when his remains were nought for in 1816, it was
with difficulty any part could be recovered. Over the spot where he
was interred Napoleon commenced the splendid Temple of Glory, after
the battle of Jena; and the superb edifice was completed by the
Bourbons, and now forms the Church of the Madeleine, the most
beautiful structure in Paris. Louis was executed on the same ground
where the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, and so many other noble victims
of the Revolution perished; where Robespierre and Danton afterwards
suffered; and where the Emperor Alexander and the allied sovereigns
took their station, when their victorious troops entered Paris in
1814! The history of modern Europe has not a scene fraught with
equally interesting recollections to exhibit. It is now marked by
the colossal obelisk of blood-red granite which was brought from
Thebes, in Upper Egypt, in 1833, by the French Government.--
ALLISON.]

The Royal Prisoners.--Separation of the Dauphin from His Family.
--Removal of the Queen.

On the morning of the King's execution, according to the narrative of
Madame Royale, his family rose at six: "The night before, my mother had
scarcely strength enough to put my brother to bed; She threw herself,
dressed as she was, on her own bed, where we heard her shivering with
cold and grief all night long. At a quarter-past six the door opened; we
believed that we were sent for to the King, but it was only the officers
looking for a prayer-book for him. We did not, however, abandon the hope
of seeing him, till shouts of joy from the infuriated populace told us
that all was over. In the afternoon my mother asked to see Clery, who
probably had some message for her; we hoped that seeing him would
occasion a burst of grief which might relieve the state of silent and
choking agony in which we saw her." The request was refused, and the
officers who brought the refusal said Clery was in "a frightful state of
despair" at not being allowed to see the royal family; shortly afterwards
he was dismissed from the Temple.

"We had now a little more freedom," continues the Princess; "our guards
even believed that we were about to be sent out of France; but nothing
could calm my mother's agony; no hope could touch her heart, and life or
death became indifferent to her. Fortunately my own affliction increased
my illness so seriously that it distracted her thoughts . . . .
My mother would go no more to the garden, because she must have passed
the door of what had been my father's room, and that she could not bear.
But fearing lest want of air should prove injurious to my brother and me,
about the end of February she asked permission to walk on the leads of
the Tower, and it was granted."

The Council of the Commune, becoming aware of the interest which these
sad promenades excited, and the sympathy with which they were observed
from the neighbouring houses, ordered that the spaces between the
battlements should be filled up with shutters, which intercepted the
view. But while the rules for the Queen's captivity were again made more
strict, some of the municipal commissioners tried slightly to alleviate
it, and by means of M. de Hue, who was at liberty in Paris, and the
faithful Turgi, who remained in the Tower, some communications passed
between the royal family and their friends. The wife of Tison, who
waited on the Queen, suspected and finally denounced these more lenient
guardians,--[Toulan, Lepitre, Vincent, Bruno, and others.]--who were
executed, the royal prisoners being subjected to a close examination.

"On the 20th of April," says Madame Royale, "my mother and I had just
gone to bed when Hebert arrived with several municipals. We got up
hastily, and these men read us a decree of the Commune directing that we
should be searched. My poor brother was asleep; they tore him from his
bed under the pretext of examining it. My mother took him up, shivering
with cold. All they took was a shopkeeper's card which my mother had
happened to keep, a stick of sealing-wax from my aunt, and from me 'une
sacre coeur de Jesus' and a prayer for the welfare of France. The search
lasted from half-past ten at night till four o'clock in the morning."

The next visit of the officials was to Madame Elisabeth alone; they found
in her room a hat which the King had worn during his imprisonment, and
which she had begged him to give her as a souvenir. They took it from
her in spite of her entreaties. "It was suspicious," said the cruel and
contemptible tyrants.

The Dauphin became ill with fever, and it was long before his mother,
who watched by him night and day, could obtain medicine or advice for
him. When Thierry was at last allowed to see him his treatment relieved
the most violent symptoms, but, says Madame Royale, "his health was never
reestablished. Want of air and exercise did him great mischief, as well
as the kind of life which this poor child led, who at eight years of age
passed his days amidst the tears of his friends, and in constant anxiety
and agony."

While the Dauphin's health was causing his family such alarm, they were
deprived of the services of Tison's wife, who became ill, and finally
insane, and was removed to the Hotel Dieu, where her ravings were
reported to the Assembly and made the ground of accusations against the
royal prisoners.

[This woman, troubled by remorse, lost her reason, threw herself at
the feet of the Queen, implored her pardon, and disturbed the Temple
for many days with the sight and the noise of her madness. The
Princesses, forgetting the denunciations of this unfortunate being,
in consideration of her repentance and insanity, watched over her by
turns, and deprived themselves of their own food to relieve her.--
LAMARTINE, "History of the Girondists," vol. iii., p.140.]

No woman took her place, and the Princesses themselves made their beds,
swept their rooms, and waited upon the Queen.

Far worse punishments than menial work were prepared for them. On 3d
July a decree of the Convention ordered that the Dauphin should be
separated from his family and "placed in the most secure apartment of the
Tower." As soon as he heard this decree pronounced, says his sister, "he
threw himself into my mother's arms, and with violent cries entreated not
to be parted from her. My mother would not let her son go, and she
actually defended against the efforts of the officers the bed in which
she had placed him. The men threatened to call up the guard and use
violence. My mother exclaimed that they had better kill her than tear
her child from her. At last they threatened our lives, and my mother's
maternal tenderness forced her to the sacrifice. My aunt and I dressed
the child, for my poor mother had no longer strength for anything.
Nevertheless, when he was dressed, she took him up in her arms and
delivered him herself to the officers, bathing him with her tears,
foreseeing that she was never to behold him again. The poor little
fellow embraced us all tenderly, and was carried away in a flood of
tears. My mother's horror was extreme when she heard that Simon, a
shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen as a municipal officer in the
Temple, was the person to whom her child was confided . . . . The
officers now no longer remained in my mother's apartment; they only came
three times a day to bring our meals and examine the bolts and bars of
our windows; we were locked up together night and day. We often went up
to the Tower, because my brother went, too, from the other side. The
only pleasure my mother enjoyed was seeing him through a crevice as he
passed at a distance. She would watch for hours together to see him as
he passed. It was her only hope, her only thought."

The Queen was soon deprived even of this melancholy consolation. On 1st
August, 1793, it was resolved that she should be tried. Robespierre
opposed the measure, but Barere roused into action that deep-rooted
hatred of the Queen which not even the sacrifice of her life availed to
eradicate. "Why do the enemies of the Republic still hope for success?"
he asked. "Is it because we have too long forgotten the crimes of the
Austrian? The children of Louis the Conspirator are hostages for the
Republic . . .but behind them lurks a woman who has been the cause of
all the disasters of France."

At two o'clock on the morning of the following day, the municipal
officers "awoke us," says Madame Royale, "to read to my mother the decree
of the Convention, which ordered her removal to the Conciergerie,

[The Conciergerie was originally, as its name implies, the porter's
lodge of the ancient Palace of Justice, and became in time a prison,
from the custom of confining there persons who had committed
trifling offences about the Court.]

preparatory to her trial. She heard it without visible emotion, and
without speaking a single word. My aunt and I immediately asked to be
allowed to accompany my mother, but this favour was refused us. All the
time my mother was making up a bundle of clothes to take with her, these
officers never left her. She was even obliged to dress herself before
them, and they asked for her pockets, taking away the trifles they
contained. She embraced me, charging me to keep up my spirits and my
courage, to take tender care of my aunt, and obey her as a second mother.
She then threw herself into my aunt's arms, and recommended her children
to her care; my aunt replied to her in a whisper, and she was then
hurried away. In leaving the Temple she struck her head against the
wicket, not having stooped low enough.

[Mathieu, the gaoler, used to say, "I make Madame Veto and her
sister and daughter, proud though they are, salute me; for the door
is so low they cannot pass without bowing."]

The officers asked whether she had hurt herself. 'No,' she replied,
'nothing can hurt me now."

The Last Moments of Marie Antoinette.

We have already seen what changes had been made in the Temple. Marie
Antoinette had been separated from her sister, her daughter, and her Son,
by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial and exile of the last
members of the family of the Bourbons. She had been removed to the
Conciergerie, and there, alone in a narrow prison, she was reduced to
what was strictly necessary, like the other prisoners. The imprudence of
a devoted friend had rendered her situation still more irksome.
Michonnis, a member of the municipality, in whom she had excited a warm
interest, was desirous of introducing to her a person who, he said,
wished to see her out of curiosity. This man, a courageous emigrant,
threw to her a carnation, in which was enclosed a slip of very fine paper
with these words: "Your friends are ready,"--false hope, and equally
dangerous for her who received it, and for him who gave it! Michonnis
and the emigrant were detected and forthwith apprehended; and the
vigilance exercised in regard to the unfortunate prisoner became from
that day more rigorous than ever.

[The Queen was lodged in a room called the council chamber, which
was considered as the moat unwholesome apartment in the Conciergerie
on account of its dampness and the bad smells by which it was
continually affected. Under pretence of giving her a person to wait
upon her they placed near her a spy,--a man of a horrible
countenance and hollow, sepulchral voice. This wretch, whose name
was Barassin, was a robber and murderer by profession. Such was the
chosen attendant on the Queen of France! A few days before her
trial this wretch was removed and a gendarme placed in her chamber,
who watched over her night and day, and from whom she was not
separated, even when in bed, but by a ragged curtain. In this
melancholy abode Marie Antoinette had no other dress than an old
black gown, stockings with holes, which she was forced to mend every
day; and she was entirely destitute of shoes.--DU BROCA.]

Gendarmes were to mount guard incessantly at the door of her prison, and
they were expressly forbidden to answer anything that she might say to
them.

That wretch Hebert, the deputy of Chaumette, and editor of the disgusting
paper Pere Duchesne, a writer of the party of which Vincent, Ronsin,
Varlet, and Leclerc were the leaders--Hebert had made it his particular
business to torment the unfortunate remnant of the dethroned family.
He asserted that the family of the tyrant ought not to be better treated
than any sans-culotte family; and he had caused a resolution to be passed
by which the sort of luxury in which the prisoners in the Temple were
maintained was to be suppressed. They were no longer to be allowed
either poultry or pastry; they were reduced to one sort of aliment for
breakfast, and to soup or broth and a single dish for dinner, to two
dishes for supper, and half a bottle of wine apiece. Tallow candles were
to be furnished instead of wag, pewter instead of silver plate, and delft
ware instead of porcelain. The wood and water carriers alone were
permitted to enter their room, and that only accompanied by two
commissioners. Their food was to be introduced to them by means of a
turning box. The numerous establishment was reduced to a cook and an
assistant, two men-servants, and a woman-servant to attend to the linen.

As soon as this resolution was passed, Hebert had repaired to the Temple
and inhumanly taken away from the unfortunate prisoners even the most
trifling articles to which they attached a high value. Eighty Louis
which Madame Elisabeth had in reserve, and which she had received from
Madame de Lamballe, were also taken away. No one is more dangerous, more
cruel, than the man without acquirements, without education, clothed with
a recent authority. If, above all, he possess a base nature, if, like
Hebert, who was check-taker at the door of a theatre, and embezzled money
out of the receipts, he be destitute of natural morality, and if he leap
all at once from the mud of his condition into power, he is as mean as he
is atrocious. Such was Hebert in his conduct at the Temple. He did not
confine himself to the annoyances which we have mentioned. He and some
others conceived the idea of separating the young Prince from his aunt
and sister. A shoemaker named Simon and his wife were the instructors to
whom it was deemed right to consign him for the purpose of giving him a
sans-cullotte education. Simon and his wife were shut up in the Temple,
and, becoming prisoners with the unfortunate child, were directed to
bring him up in their own way. Their food was better than that of the
Princesses, and they shared the table of the municipal commissioners who
were on duty. Simon was permitted to go down, accompanied by two
commissioners, to the court of the Temple, for the purpose of giving the
Dauphin a little exercise.

Hebert conceived the infamous idea of wringing from this boy revelations
to criminate his unhappy mother. Whether this wretch imputed to the
child false revelations, or abused his, tender age and his condition to
extort from him what admissions soever he pleased, he obtained a
revolting deposition; and as the youth of the Prince did not admit of his
being brought before the tribunal, Hebert appeared and detailed the
infamous particulars which he had himself either dictated or invented.

It was on the 14th of October that Marie Antoinette appeared before her
judges. Dragged before the sanguinary tribunal by inexorable
revolutionary vengeance, she appeared there without any chance of
acquittal, for it was not to obtain her acquittal that the Jacobins had
brought her before it. It was necessary, however, to make some charges.
Fouquier therefore collected the rumours current among the populace ever
since the arrival of the Princess in France, and, in the act of
accusation, he charged her with having plundered the exchequer, first for
her pleasures, and afterwards in order to transmit money to her brother,
the Emperor. He insisted on the scenes of the 5th and 6th of October,
and on the dinners of the Life Guards, alleging that she had at that
period framed a plot, which obliged the people to go to Versailles to
frustrate it. He afterwards accused her of having governed her husband,
interfered in the choice of ministers, conducted the intrigues with the
deputies gained by the Court, prepared the journey to Varennes, provoked
the war, and transmitted to the enemy's generals all our plans of
campaign. He further accused her of having prepared a new conspiracy on
the 10th of August, of having on that day caused the people to be fired
upon, having induced her husband to defend himself by taxing him with
cowardice; lastly, of having never ceased to plot and correspond with
foreigners since her captivity in the Temple, and of having there treated
her young son as King. We here observe how, on the terrible day of long-
deferred vengeance, when subjects at length break forth and strike such
of their princes as have not deserved the blow, everything is distorted
and converted into crime. We see how the profusion and fondness for
pleasure, so natural to a young princess, how her attachment to her
native country, her influence over her husband, her regrets, always more
indiscreet in a woman than a man, nay, even her bolder courage, appeared
to their inflamed or malignant imaginations.

It was necessary to produce witnesses. Lecointre, deputy of Versailles,
who had seen what had passed on the 5th and 6th of October, Hebert, who
had frequently visited the Temple, various clerks in the ministerial
offices, and several domestic servants of the old Court were summoned..
Admiral d'Estaing, formerly commandant of the guard of Versailles;
Manuel, the ex-procureur of the Commune; Latour-du-Pin, minister of war
in 1789; the venerable Bailly, who, it was said, had been, with La
Fayette, an accomplice in the journey to Varennes; lastly, Valaze one of
the Girondists destined to the scaffold, were taken from their prisons
and compelled to give evidence.

No precise fact was elicited. Some had seen the Queen in high spirits
when the Life Guards testified their attachment; others had seen her
vexed and dejected while being conducted to Paris, or brought back from
Varennes; these had been present at splendid festivities which must have
cost enormous sums; those had heard it said in the ministerial offices
that the Queen was adverse to the sanction of the decrees. An ancient
waiting-woman of the Queen had heard the Duc de Coigny say, in 1788, that
the Emperor had already received two hundred millions from France to make
war upon the Turks.

The cynical Hebert, being brought before the unfortunate Queen, dared at
length to prefer the charges wrung from the young Prince. He said that
Charles Capet had given Simon an account of the journey to Varennes, and
mentioned La Fayette and Bailly as having cooperated in it. He then
added that this boy was addicted to odious and very premature vices for
his age; that he had been surprised by Simon, who, on questioning him,
learned that he derived from his mother the vices in which he indulged.
Hebert said that it was no doubt the intention of Marie Antoinette, by
weakening thus, early the physical constitution of her son, to secure to
herself the means of ruling him in case he should ever ascend the throne.
The rumours which had been whispered for twenty years by a malicious
Court had given the people a most unfavourable opinion of the morals of
the Queen. That audience, however, though wholly Jacobin, was disgusted
at the accusations of Hebert.

[Can there be a more infernal invention than that made against the.
Queen by Hdbert,-namely, that she had had an improper intimacy with
her own son? He made use of this sublime idea of which he boasted
in order to prejudice the women against the Queen, and to prevent
her execution from exciting pity. It had, however, no other effect
than that of disgusting all parties.--PRUDHOMME.]

He nevertheless persisted in supporting them.

[Hebert did not long survive her in whose sufferings he had taken
such an infamous part. He was executed on 26th March, 1794.]

The unhappy mother made no reply. Urged a new to explain herself, she
said, with extraordinary emotion, "I thought that human nature would
excuse me from answering such an imputation, but I appeal from it to the
heart of every mother here present." This noble and simple reply
affected all who heard it.

In the depositions of the witnesses, however, all was not so bitter for
Marie Antoinette. The brave D'Estaing, whose enemy she had been, would
not say anything to inculpate her, and spoke only of the courage which
she had shown on the 5th and 6th of October, and of the noble resolution
which she had expressed, to die beside her husband rather than fly.
Manuel, in spite of his enmity to the Court during the time of the
Legislative Assembly, declared that he could not say anything against the
accused. When the venerable Bailly was brought forward, who formerly so
often predicted to the Court the calamities which its imprudence must
produce, he appeared painfully affected; and when he was asked if he knew
the wife of Capet, "Yes," said he, bowing respectfully, "I have known
Madame." He declared that he knew nothing, and maintained that the
declarations extorted from the young Prince relative to the journey to
Varennes were false. In recompense for his deposition he was assailed
with outrageous reproaches, from which he might judge what fate would
soon be awarded to himself.

In all the evidence there appeared but two serious facts, attested by
Latour-du-Pin and Valaze, who deposed to them because they could not help
it. Latour-du-Pin declared that Marie Antoinette had applied to him for
an accurate statement of the armies while he was minister of war.
Valaze, always cold, but respectful towards misfortune, would not say
anything to criminate the accused; yet he could not help declaring that,
as a member of the commission of twenty-four, being charged with his
colleagues to examine the papers found at the house of Septeuil,
treasurer of the civil list, he had seen bonds for various sums signed
Antoinette, which was very natural; but he added that he had also seen a
letter in which the minister requested the King to transmit to the Queen
the copy of the plan of campaign which he had in his hands. The most
unfavourable construction was immediately put upon these two facts, the
application for a statement of the armies, and the communication of the
plan of campaign; and it was concluded that they could not be wanted for
any other purpose than to be sent to the enemy, for it was not supposed
that a young princess should turn her attention, merely for her own
satisfaction, to matters of administration and military, plans. After
these depositions, several others were received respecting the expenses
of the Court, the influence of the Queen in public affairs, the scene of
the 10th of August, and what had passed in the Temple; and the most vague
rumours and most trivial circumstances were eagerly caught at as proofs.

Marie Antoinette frequently repeated, with presence of mind and firmness,
that there was no precise fact against her;

[At first the Queen, consulting only her own sense of dignity, had
resolved on her trial to make no other reply to the questions of her
judges than "Assassinate me as you have already assassinated my
husband!" Afterwards, however, she determined to follow the example
of the King, exert herself in her defence, and leave her judges
without any excuse or pretest for putting her to death.--WEBER'S
"Memoirs of Marie Antoinette."]

that, besides, though the wife of Louis XVI., she was not answerable for
any of the acts of his reign. Fouquier nevertheless declared her to be
sufficiently convicted; Chaveau-Lagarde made unavailing efforts to defend
her; and the unfortunate Queen was condemned to suffer the same fate as
her husband.

Conveyed back to the Conciergerie, she there passed in tolerable
composure the night preceding her execution, and, on the morning of the
following day, the 16th of October,

[The Queen, after having written and prayed, slept soundly for some
hours. On her waking, Bault's daughter dressed her and adjusted her
hair with more neatness than on other days. Marie Antoinette wore a
white gown, a white handkerchief covered her shoulders, a white cap
her hair; a black ribbon bound this cap round her temples .... The
cries, the looks, the laughter, the jests of the people overwhelmed
her with humiliation; her colour, changing continually from purple
to paleness, betrayed her agitation .... On reaching the scaffold
she inadvertently trod on the executioner's foot. "Pardon me," she
said, courteously. She knelt for an instant and uttered a half-
audible prayer; then rising and glancing towards the towers of the
Temple, "Adieu, once again, my children," she said; "I go to rejoin
your father."--LAMARTINE.]

she was conducted, amidst a great concourse of the populace, to the fatal
spot where, ten months before, Louis XVI. had perished. She listened
with calmness to the exhortations of the ecclesiastic who accompanied
her, and cast an indifferent look at the people who had so often
applauded her beauty and her grace, and who now as warmly applauded her
execution. On reaching the foot of the scaffold she perceived the
Tuileries, and appeared to be moved; but she hastened to ascend the fatal
ladder, and gave herself up with courage to the executioner.

[Sorrow had blanched the Queen's once beautiful hair; but her
features and air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld
her; her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a
vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost. When led out to
execution, she was dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with
her own hands. Placed in a tumbrel, with her arms tied behind her,
she was taken by a circuitous route to the Place de la Revolution,
and she ascended the scaffold with a firm and dignified step, as if
she had been about to take her place on a throne by the side of her
husband.-LACRETELLE.]

The infamous wretch exhibited her head to the people, as he was
accustomed to do when he had sacrificed an illustrious victim.

The Last Separation.--Execution of Madame Elisabeth.
--Death of the Dauphin.

The two Princesses left in the Temple were now almost inconsolable; they
spent days and nights in tears, whose only alleviation was that they were
shed together. "The company of my aunt, whom I loved so tenderly," said
Madame Royale, "was a great comfort to me. But alas! all that I loved
was perishing around me, and I was soon to lose her also . . . . In
the beginning of September I had an illness caused solely by my anxiety
about my mother; I never heard a drum beat that I did not expect another
3d of September."--[when the head of the Princesse de Lamballe was
carried to the Temple.]

In the course of the month the rigour of their captivity was much
increased. The Commune ordered that they should only have one room; that
Tison (who had done the heaviest of the household work for them, and
since the kindness they showed to his insane wife had occasionally given
them tidings of the Dauphin) should be imprisoned in the turret; that
they should be supplied with only the barest necessaries; and that no one
should enter their room save to carry water and firewood. Their quantity
of firing was reduced, and they were not allowed candles. They were also
forbidden to go on the leads, and their large sheets were taken away,
"lest--notwithstanding the gratings!--they should escape from the
windows."

On 8th October, 1793, Madame Royale was ordered to go downstairs, that
she might be interrogated by some municipal officers. "My aunt, who was
greatly affected, would have followed, but they stopped her. She asked
whether I should be permitted to come up again; Chaumette assured her
that I should. 'You may trust,' said he, 'the word of an honest
republican. She shall return.' I soon found myself in my brother's
room, whom I embraced tenderly; but we were torn asunder, and I was
obliged to go into another room.--[This was the last time the brother and
sister met] . . . Chaumette then questioned me about a thousand
shocking things of which they accused my mother and aunt; I was so
indignant at hearing such horrors that, terrified as I was, I could not
help exclaiming that they were infamous falsehoods.

"But in spite of my tears they still pressed their questions. There were
some things which I did not comprehend, but of which I understood enough
to make me weep with indignation and horror . . . . They then asked
me about Varennes, and other things. I answered as well as I could
without implicating anybody. I had always heard my parents say that it
were better to die than to implicate anybody." When the examination was
over the Princess begged to be allowed to join her mother, but Chaumette
said he could not obtain permission for her to do so. She was then
cautioned to say nothing about her examination to her aunt, who was next
to appear before them. Madame Elisabeth, her niece declares, "replied
with still more contempt to their shocking questions."

The only intimation of the Queen's fate which her daughter and her
sister-in-law were allowed to receive was through hearing her sentence
cried by the newsman. But "we could not persuade ourselves that she was
dead," writes Madame Royale. "A hope, so natural to the unfortunate,
persuaded us that she must have been saved. For eighteen months I
remained in this cruel suspense. We learnt also by the cries of the
newsman the death of the Duc d'Orleans.

[The Duo d'Orleans, the early and interested propagator of the
Revolution, was its next victim. Billaud Varennes said in the
Convention: "The time has come when all the conspirators should be
known and struck. I demand that we no longer pass over in silence a
man whom we seem to have forgotten, despite the numerous facts
against him. I demand that D'ORLEANS be sent to the Revolutionary
Tribunal." The Convention, once his hireling adulators, unanimously
supported the proposal. In vain he alleged his having been
accessory to the disorders of 5th October, his support of the revolt
on 10th August, 1792, his vote against the King on 17th January,
1793. His condemnation was pronounced. He then asked only for a
delay of twenty-four hours, and had a repast carefully prepared, on
which he feasted with avidity. When led out for execution he gazed
with a smile on the Palais Royal, the scene of his former orgies.
He was detained for a quarter of an hour before that palace by the
order of Robespierre, who had asked his daughter's hand, and
promised in return to excite a tumult in which the Duke's life
should be saved. Depraved though he was, he would not consent to
such a sacrifice, and he met his fate with stoical fortitude.--
ALLISON, vol. iii., p. 172.]

It was the only piece of news that reached us during the whole winter."

The severity with which the prisoners were treated was carried into every
detail of their life. The officers who guarded them took away their
chessmen and cards because some of them were named kings and queens, and
all the books with coats of arms on them; they refused to get ointment
for a gathering on Madame Elisabeth's arm; they, would not allow her to
make a herb-tea which she thought would strengthen her niece; they
declined to supply fish or eggs on fast-days or during Lent, bringing
only coarse fat meat, and brutally replying to all remonstances, "None
but fools believe in that stuff nowadays." Madame Elisabeth never made
the officials another request, but reserved some of the bread and cafe-
au-fait from her breakfast for her second meal. The time during which
she could be thus tormented was growing short.

On 9th May, 1794, as the Princesses were going to bed, the outside bolts
of the door were unfastened and a loud knocking was heard. "When my aunt
was dressed," says Madame Royale, "she opened the door, and they said to
her, 'Citoyenne, come down.'--'And my niece?'--'We shall take care of her
afterwards.' She embraced me, and to calm my agitation promised to
return. 'No, citoyenne,' said the men, 'bring your bonnet; you shall not
return.' They overwhelmed her with abuse, but she bore it patiently,
embracing me, and exhorting me to trust in Heaven, and never to forget
the last commands of my father and mother."

Madame Elisabeth was then taken to the Conciergerie, where she was
interrogated by the vice-president at midnight,' and then allowed to take
some hours rest on the bed on which Marie Antoinette had slept for the
last time. In the morning she was brought before the tribunal, with
twenty-four other prisoners, of varying ages and both sexes, some of whom
had once been frequently seen at Court.

"Of what has Elisabeth to complain?" Fouquier-Tinville satirically
asked. "At the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by faithful nobility,
she may imagine herself again at Versailles."

"You call my brother a tyrant," the Princess replied to her accuser; "if
he had been what you say, you would not be where you are, nor I before
you!"

She was sentenced to death, and showed neither surprise nor grief. "I am
ready to die," she said, "happy in the prospect of rejoining in a better
world those whom I loved on earth."

On being taken to the room where those condemned to suffer at the same
time as herself were assembled, she spoke to them with so much piety and
resignation that they were encouraged by her example to show calmness and
courage like her own. The women, on leaving the cart, begged to embrace
her, and she said some words of comfort to each in turn as they mounted
the scaffold, which she was not allowed to ascend till all her companions
had been executed before her eyes.

[Madame Elisabeth was one of those rare personages only seen at
distant intervals during the course of ages; she set an example of
steadfast piety in the palace of kings, she lived amid her family
the favourite of all and the admiration of the world .... When I
went to Versailles Madame Elisabeth was twenty-two years of age.
Her plump figure and pretty pink colour must have attracted notice,
and her air of calmness and contentment even more than her beauty.
She was fond of billiards, and her elegance and courage in riding
were remarkable. But she never allowed these amusements to
interfere with her religious observances. At that time her wish to
take the veil at St. Cyr was much talked of, but the King was too
fond of his sister to endure the separation. There were also
rumours of a marriage between Madame Elisabeth and the Emperor
Joseph. The Queen was sincerely attached to her brother, and loved
her sister-in-law most tenderly; she ardently desired this marriage
as a means of raising the Princess to one of the first thrones in
Europe, and as a possible means of turning the Emperor from his
innovations. She had been very carefully educated, had talent in
music and painting, spoke Italian and a little Latin, and understood
mathematics.... Her last moments were worthy of her courage and
virtue.--D'HEZECQUES's "Recollections," pp. 72-75.]

"It is impossible to imagine my distress at finding myself separated from
my aunt," says Madame Royale. "Since I had been able to appreciate her
merits, I saw in her nothing but religion, gentleness, meekness, modesty,
and a devoted attachment to her family; she sacrificed her life for them,
since nothing could persuade her to leave the King and Queen. I never
can be sufficiently grateful to her for her goodness to me, which ended
only with her life. She looked on me as her child, and I honoured and
loved her as a second mother. I was thought to be very like her in
countenance, and I feel conscious that I have something of her character.
Would to God I might imitate her virtues, and hope that I may hereafter
deserve to meet her, as well as my dear parents, in the bosom of our
Creator, where I cannot doubt that they enjoy the reward of their
virtuous lives and meritorious deaths."

Madame Royale vainly begged to be allowed to rejoin her mother or her
aunt, or at least to know their fate. The municipal officers would tell
her nothing, and rudely refused her request to have a woman placed with
her. "I asked nothing but what seemed indispensable, though it was often
harshly refused," she says. "But I at least could keep myself clean. I
had soap and water, and carefully swept out my room every day. I had no
light, but in the long days I did not feel this privation much . . . .
I had some religious works and travels, which I had read over and over.
I had also some knitting, 'qui m'ennuyait beaucoup'." Once, she
believes, Robespierre visited her prison:

[It has been said that Robespierre vainly tried to obtain the hand
of Mademoiselle d'Orleans. It was also rumoured that Madame Royale
herself owed her life to his matrimonial ambition.]

"The officers showed him great respect; the people in the Tower did not
know him, or at least would not tell me who he was. He stared insolently
at me, glanced at my books, and, after joining the municipal officers in
a search, retired."

[On another occasion "three men in scarfs," who entered the
Princess's room, told her that they did not see why she should wish
to be released, as she seemed very comfortable! "It is dreadful,'
I replied, 'to be separated for more than a year from one's mother,
without even hearing what has become of her or of my aunt.'--'You
are not ill?'--'No, monsieur, but the cruellest illness is that of
the heart'--' We can do nothing for you. Be patient, and submit to
the justice and goodness of the French people: I had nothing more to
say."--DUCHESSE D'ANGOULEME, "Royal Memoirs," p. 273.]

When Laurent was appointed by the Convention to the charge of the young
prisoners, Madame Royale was treated with more consideration. "He was
always courteous," she says; he restored her tinderbox, gave her fresh
books, and allowed her candles and as much firewood as she wanted, "which
pleased me greatly." This simple expression of relief gives a clearer
idea of what the delicate girl must have suffered than a volume of
complaints.

But however hard Madame Royale's lot might be, that of the Dauphin was
infinitely harder. Though only eight years old when he entered the
Temple, he was by nature and education extremely precocious; "his memory
retained everything, and his sensitiveness comprehended everything." His
features "recalled the somewhat effeminate look of Louis XV., and the
Austrian hauteur of Maria Theresa; his blue eyes, aquiline nose, elevated
nostrils, well-defined mouth, pouting lips, chestnut hair parted in the
middle and falling in thick curls on his shoulders, resembled his mother
before her years of tears and torture. All the beauty of his race, by
both descents, seemed to reappear in him."--[Lamartine]-- For some time
the care of his parents preserved his health and cheerfulness even in the
Temple; but his constitution was weakened by the fever recorded by his
sister, and his gaolers were determined that he should never regain
strength.

"What does the Convention intend to do with him?" asked Simon, when the
innocent victim was placed in his clutches. "Transport him?"

"No."

"Kill him?"

"No."

"Poison him?"

"No."

"What, then?"

"Why, get rid of him."

For such a purpose they could not have chosen their instruments better.
"Simon and his wife, cut off all those fair locks that had been his
youthful glory and his mother's pride. This worthy pair stripped him of
the mourning he wore for his father; and as they did so, they called it
'playing at the game of the spoiled king.' They alternately induced him
to commit excesses, and then half starved him. They beat him
mercilessly; nor was the treatment by night less brutal than that by day.
As soon as the weary boy had sunk into his first profound sleep, they
would loudly call him by name, 'Capet! Capet!' Startled, nervous, bathed
in perspiration, or sometimes trembling with cold, he would spring up,
rush through the dark, and present himself at Simon's bedside, murmuring,
tremblingly, 'I am here, citizen.'--'Come nearer; let me feel you.'
He would approach the bed as he was ordered, although he knew the
treatment that awaited him. Simon would buffet him on the head, or kick
him away, adding the remark, 'Get to bed again, wolfs cub; I only wanted
to know that you were safe.' On one of these occasions, when the child
had fallen half stunned upon his own miserable couch, and lay there
groaning and faint with pain, Simon roared out with a laugh, 'Suppose you
were king, Capet, what would you do to me?' The child thought of his
father's dying words, and said, 'I would forgive you.'"--[THIERS]

The change in the young Prince's mode of life, and the cruelties and
caprices to which he was subjected, soon made him fall ill, says his
sister. "Simon forced him to eat to excess, and to drink large
quantities of wine, which he detested . . . . He grew extremely fat
without increasing in height or strength." His aunt and sister, deprived
of the pleasure of tending him, had the pain of hearing his childish
voice raised in the abominable songs his gaolers taught him. The
brutality of Simon "depraved at once the body and soul of his pupil. He
called him the young wolf of the Temple. He treated him as the young of
wild animals are treated when taken from the mother and reduced to
captivity,--at once intimidated by blows and enervated by taming. He
punished for sensibility; he rewarded meanness; he encouraged vice; he
made the child wait on him at table, sometimes striking him on the face
with a knotted towel, sometimes raising the poker and threatening to
strike him with it."

[Simon left the Temple to become a municipal officer. He was
involved in the overthrow of Robespierre, and guillotined the day
after him, 29th July, 1794.]

Yet when Simon was removed the poor young Prince's condition became even
worse. His horrible loneliness induced an apathetic stupor to which any
suffering would have been preferable. "He passed his days without any
kind of occupation; they did not allow him light in the evening. His
keepers never approached him but to give him food;" and on the rare
occasions when they took him to the platform of the Tower, he was unable
or unwilling to move about. When, in November, 1794, a commissary named
Gomin arrived at the Temple, disposed to treat the little prisoner with
kindness, it was too late. "He took extreme care of my brother," says
Madame Royale. "For a long time the unhappy child had been shut up in
darkness, and he was dying of fright. He was very grateful for the
attentions of Gomin, and became much attached to him." But his physical
condition was alarming, and, owing to Gomin's representations, a
commission was instituted to examine him. "The commissioners appointed
were Harmond, Mathieu, and Reverchon, who visited 'Louis Charles,' as he
was now called, in the month of February, 1795. They found the young
Prince seated at a square deal table, at which he was playing with some
dirty cards, making card houses and the like,--the materials having been
furnished him, probably, that they might figure in the report as
evidences of indulgence. He did not look up from the table as the
commissioners entered. He was in a slate-coloured dress, bareheaded; the
room was reported as clean, the bed in good condition, the linen fresh;
his clothes were also reported as new; but, in spite of all these
assertions, it is well known that his bed had not been made for months,
that he had not left his room, nor was permitted to leave it, for any
purpose whatever, that it was consequently uninhabitable, and that he was
covered with vermin and with sores. The swellings at his knees alone
were sufficient to disable him from walking. One of the commissioners
approached the young Prince respectfully. The latter did not raise his
head. Harmond in a kind voice begged him to speak to them. The eyes of
the boy remained fixed on the table before him. They told him of the
kindly intentions of the Government, of their hopes that he would yet be
happy, and their desire that he would speak unreservedly to the medical
man that was to visit him. He seemed to listen with profound attention,
but not a single word passed his lips. It was an heroic principle that
impelled that poor young heart to maintain the silence of a mute in
presence of these men. He remembered too well the days when three other
commissaries waited on him, regaled him with pastry and wine, and
obtained from him that hellish accusation against the mother that he
loved. He had learnt by some means the import of the act, so far as it
was an injury to his mother. He now dreaded seeing again three
commissaries, hearing again kind words, and being treated again with fine
promises. Dumb as death itself he sat before them, and remained
motionless as stone, and as mute." [THIERS]

His disease now made rapid progress, and Gomin and Lasne, superintendents
of the Temple, thinking it necessary to inform the Government of the
melancholy condition of their prisoner, wrote on the register: "Little
Capet is unwell." No notice was taken of this account, which was renewed
next day in more urgent terms: "Little Capet is dangerously ill." Still
there was no word from beyond the walls. "We must knock harder," said
the keepers to each other, and they added, "It is feared he will not
live," to the words "dangerously ill." At length, on Wednesday, 6th May,
1795, three days after the first report, the authorities appointed M.
Desault to give the invalid the assistance of his art. After having
written down his name on the register he was admitted to see the Prince.
He made a long and very attentive examination of the unfortunate child,
asked him many questions without being able to obtain an answer, and
contented himself with prescribing a decoction of hops, to be taken by
spoonfuls every half-hour, from six o'clock in the morning till eight in
the evening. On the first day the Prince steadily refused to take it.
In vain Gomin several times drank off a glass of the potion in his
presence; his example proved as ineffectual as his words. Next day Lasne
renewed his solicitations. "Monsieur knows very well that I desire
nothing but the good of his health, and he distresses me deeply by thus
refusing to take what might contribute to it. I entreat him as a favour
not to give me this cause of grief." And as Lasne, while speaking, began
to taste the potion in a glass, the child took what he offered him out of
his hands. "You have, then, taken an oath that I should drink it," said
he, firmly; "well, give it me, I will drink it." From that moment he
conformed with docility to whatever was required of him, but the policy
of the Commune had attained its object; help had been withheld till it
was almost a mockery to supply it.

The Prince's weakness was excessive; his keepers could scarcely drag him
to the, top of the Tower; walking hurt his tender feet, and at every step
he stopped to press the arm of Lasne with both hands upon his breast. At
last he suffered so much that it was no longer possible for him to walk,
and his keeper carried him about, sometimes on the platform, and
sometimes in the little tower, where the royal family had lived at first.
But the slight improvement to his health occasioned by the change of air
scarcely compensated for the pain which his fatigue gave him. On the
battlement of the platform nearest the left turret, the rain had, by
perseverance through ages, hollowed out a kind of basin. The water that
fell remained there for several days; and as, during the spring of 1795,
storms were of frequent occurrence, this little sheet of water was kept
constantly supplied. Whenever the child was brought out upon the
platform, he saw a little troop of sparrows, which used to come to drink
and bathe in this reservoir. At first they flew away at his approach,
but from being accustomed to see him walking quietly there every day,
they at last grew more familiar, and did not spread their wings for
flight till he came up close to them. They were always the same, he knew
them by sight, and perhaps like himself they were inhabitants of that
ancient pile. He called them his birds; and his first action, when the
door into the terrace was opened, was to look towards that side,--and
the sparrows were always there. He delighted in their chirping, and he
must have envied them their wings.

Though so little could be done to alleviate his sufferings, a moral
improvement was taking place in him. He was touched by the lively
interest displayed by his physician, who never failed to visit him at
nine o'clock every morning. He seemed pleased with the attention paid
him, and ended by placing entire confidence in M. Desault. Gratitude
loosened his tongue; brutality and insult had failed to extort a murmur,
but kind treatment restored his speech he had no words for anger, but he
found them to express his thanks. M. Desault prolonged his visits as
long as the officers of the municipality would permit. When they
announced the close of the visit, the child, unwilling to beg them to
allow a longer time, held back M. Desault by the skirt of his coat.
Suddenly M. Desault's visits ceased. Several days passed and nothing was
heard of him. The keepers wondered at his absence, and the poor little
invalid was much distressed at it. The commissary on duty (M. Benoist)
suggested that it would be proper to send to the physician's house to
make inquiries as to the cause of so long an absence. Gomin and Larne
had not yet ventured to follow this advice, when next day M. Benoist was
relieved by M. Bidault, who, hearing M. Desault's name mentioned as he
came in, immediately said, "You must not expect to see him any more; he
died yesterday."

M. Pelletan, head surgeon of the Grand Hospice de l'Humanite, was next
directed to attend the prisoner, and in June he found him in so alarming
a state that he at once asked for a coadjutor, fearing to undertake the
responsibility alone. The physician--sent for form's sake to attend the
dying child, as an advocate is given by law to a criminal condemned
beforehand--blamed the officers of the municipality for not having
removed the blind, which obstructed the light, and the numerous bolts,
the noise of which never failed to remind the victim of his captivity.
That sound, which always caused him an involuntary shudder, disturbed him
in the last mournful scene of his unparalleled tortures. M. Pelletan
said authoritatively to the municipal on duty, "If you will not take
these bolts and casings away at once, at least you can make no objection
to our carrying the child into another room, for I suppose we are sent
here to take charge of him." The Prince, being disturbed by these words,
spoken as they were with great animation, made a sign to the physician to
come nearer. "Speak lower, I beg of you," said he; "I am afraid they
will hear you up-stairs, and I should be very sorry for them to know that
I am ill, as it would give them much uneasiness."

At first the change to a cheerful and airy room revived the Prince and
gave him evident pleasure, but the improvement did not last. Next day M.
Pelletan learned that the Government had acceded to his request for a
colleague. M. Dumangin, head physician of the Hospice de l'Unite, made
his appearance at his house on the morning of Sunday, 7th June, with the
official despatch sent him by the committee of public safety. They
repaired together immediately to the Tower. On their arrival they heard
that the child, whose weakness was excessive, had had a fainting fit,
which had occasioned fears to be entertained that his end was
approaching. He had revived a little, however, when the physicians went
up at about nine o'clock. Unable to contend with increasing exhaustion,
they perceived there was no longer any hope of prolonging an existence
worn out by so much suffering, and that all their art could effect would
be to soften the last stage of this lamentable disease. While standing
by the Prince's bed, Gomin noticed that he was quietly crying, and asked
him. kindly what was the matter. "I am always alone," he said. "My
dear mother remains in the other tower." Night came,--his last night,--
which the regulations of the prison condemned him to pass once more in
solitude, with suffering, his old companion, only at his side. This
time, however, death, too, stood at his pillow. When Gomin went up to
the child's room on the morning of 8th June, he said, seeing him calm,
motionless, and mute:

"I hope you are not in pain just now?"

"Oh, yes, I am still in pain, but not nearly so much,--the music is so
beautiful!"

Now there was no music to be heard, either in the Tower or anywhere near.

Gomin, astonished, said to him, "From what direction do you hear this
music?"

"From above!"

"Have you heard it long?"

"Since you knelt down. Do you not hear it? Listen! Listen!" And the
child, with a nervous motion, raised his faltering hand, as he opened his
large eyes illuminated by delight. His poor keeper, unwilling to destroy
this last sweet illusion, appeared to listen also.

After a few minutes of attention the child again started, and cried out,
in intense rapture, "Amongst all the voices I have distinguished that of
my mother!"

These were almost his last words. At a quarter past two he died, Lasne
only being in the room. at the time. Lasne acquainted Gomin and Damont,
the commissary on duty, with the event, and they repaired to the chamber
of death. The poor little royal corpse was carried from the room into
that where he had suffered so long,--where for two years he had never
ceased to suffer. From this apartment the father had gone to the
scaffold, and thence the son must pass to the burial-ground. The remains
were laid out on the bed, and the doors of the apartment were set open,--
doors which had remained closed ever since the Revolution had seized on a
child, then full of vigour and grace and life and health!

At eight o'clock next morning (9th June) four members of the committee of
general safety came to the Tower to make sure that the Prince was really
dead. When they were admitted to the death-chamber by Lasne and Damont
they affected the greatest indifference. "The event is not of the least
importance," they repeated, several times over; "the police commissary of
the section will come and receive the declaration of the decease; he will
acknowledge it, and proceed to the interment without any ceremony; and
the committee will give the necessary directions." As they withdrew,
some officers of the Temple guard asked to see the remains of little
Capet. Damont having observed that the guard would not permit the bier
to pass without its being opened, the deputies decided that the officers
and non-commissioned officers of the guard going off duty, together with
those coming on, should be all invited to assure themselves of the
child's death. All having assembled in the room where the body lay, he
asked them if they recognised it as that of the ex-Dauphin, son of the
last King of France. Those who had seen the young Prince at the
Tuileries, or at the Temple (and most of them had), bore witness to its
being the body of Louis XVII. When they were come down into the council-
room, Darlot drew up the minutes of this attestation, which was signed by
a score of persons. These minutes were inserted in the journal of the
Temple tower, which was afterwards deposited in the office of the
Minister of the Interior.

During this visit the surgeons entrusted with the autopsy arrived at the
outer gate of the Temple. These were Dumangin, head physician of the
Hospice de l'Unite; Pelletan, head surgeon of the Grand Hospice de
l'Humanite; Jeanroy, professor in the medical schools of Paris; and
Laasus, professor of legal medicine at the Ecole de Sante of Paris.
The last two were selected by Dumangin and Pelletan because of the former
connection of M. Lassus with Mesdames de France, and of M. Jeanroy with
the House of Lorraine, which gave a peculiar weight to their signatures.
Gomin received them in the council-room, and detained them until the
National Guard, descending from the second floor, entered to sign the
minutes prepared by Darlot. This done, Lasne, Darlot, and Bouquet went
up again with the surgeons, and introduced them into the apartment of
Louis XVII., whom they at first examined as he lay on his death-bed; but
M. Jeanroy observing that the dim light of this room was but little
favourable to the accomplishment of their mission, the commissaries
prepared a table in the first room, near the window, on which the corpse
was laid, and the surgeons began their melancholy operation.

At seven o'clock the police commissary ordered the body to be taken up,
and that they should proceed to the cemetery. It was the season of the
longest days, and therefore the interment did not take place in secrecy
and at night, as some misinformed narrators have said or written; it took
place in broad daylight, and attracted a great concourse of people before
the gates of the Temple palace. One of the municipals wished to have the
coffin carried out secretly by the door opening into the chapel
enclosure; but M. Duaser, police commiasary, who was specially entrusted
with the arrangement of the ceremony, opposed this indecorous measure,
and the procession passed out through the great gate. The crowd that was
pressing round was kept back, and compelled to keep a line, by a
tricoloured ribbon, held at short distances by gendarmes. Compassion and
sorrow were impressed on every countenance.

A small detachment of the troops of the line from the garrison of Paris,
sent by the authorities, was waiting to serve as an escort. The bier,
still covered with the pall, was carried on a litter on the shoulders of
four men, who relieved each other two at a time; it was preceded by six
or eight men, headed by a sergeant. The procession was accompanied a
long way by the crowd, and a great number of persona followed it even to
the cemetery. The name of "Little Capet," and the more popular title of
Dauphin, spread from lip to lip, with exclamations of pity and
compassion. The funeral entered the cemetery of Ste. Marguerite, not by
the church, as some accounts assert, but by the old gate of the cemetery.
The interment was made in the corner, on the left, at a distance of eight
or nine feet from the enclosure wall, and at an equal distance from a
small house, which subsequently served as a school. The grave was filled
up,--no mound marked its place, and not even a trace remained of the
interment! Not till then did the commissaries of police and the
municipality withdraw, and enter the house opposite the church to draw up
the declaration of interment. It was nearly nine o'clock, and still
daylight.

Release of Madame Royale.--Her Marriage to the Duc d'Angouleme.
--Return to France.--Death.

The last person to hear of the sad events in the Temple was the one for
whom they had the deepest and most painful interest. After her brother's
death the captivity of Madame Royale was much lightened. She was allowed
to walk in the Temple gardens, and to receive visits from some ladies of
the old Court, and from Madame de Chantereine, who at last, after several
times evading her questions, ventured cautiously to tell her of the
deaths of her mother, aunt, and brother. Madame Royale wept bitterly,
but had much difficulty in expressing her feelings. "She spoke so
confusedly," says Madame de la Ramiere in a letter to Madame de Verneuil,
"that it was difficult to understand her. It took her more than a
month's reading aloud, with careful study of pronunciation, to make
herself intelligible,--so much had she lost the power of expression."
She was dressed with plainness amounting to poverty, and her hands were
disfigured by exposure to cold and by the menial work she had been so
long accustomed to do for herself, and which it was difficult to persuade
her to leave off. When urged to accept the services of an attendant, she
replied, with a sad prevision of the vicissitudes of her future life,
that she did not like to form a habit which she might have again to
abandon. She suffered herself, however, to be persuaded gradually to
modify her recluse and ascetic habits. It was well she did so, as a
preparation for the great changes about to follow.

Nine days after the death of her brother, the city of Orleans interceded
for the daughter of Louis XVI., and sent deputies to the Convention to
pray for her deliverance and restoration to her family. Names followed
this example; and Charette, on the part of the Vendeans, demanded, as a
condition of the pacification of La Vendee, that the Princess should be
allowed to join her relations. At length the Convention decreed that
Madame Royale should be exchanged with Austria for the representatives
and ministers whom Dumouriez had given up to the Prince of Cobourg,--
Drouet, Semonville, Maret, and other prisoners of importance. At
midnight on 19th December, 1795, which was her birthday, the Princess was
released from prison, the Minister of the Interior, M. Benezech, to avoid
attracting public attention and possible disturbance, conducting her on
foot from the Temple to a neighbouring street, where his carriage awaited
her. She made it her particular request that Gomin, who had been so
devoted to her brother, should be the commissary appointed to accompany
her to the frontier; Madame de Soucy, formerly under-governess to the
children of France, was also in attendance; and the Princess took with
her a dog named Coco, which had belonged to Louis XVI.

[The mention of the little dog taken from the Temple by Madame
Royale reminds me how fond all the family were of these creatures.
Each Princess kept a different kind. Mesdames had beautiful
spaniels; little grayhounds were preferred by Madame Elisabeth.
Louis XVI. was the only one of all his family who had no dogs in his
room. I remember one day waiting in the great gallery for the
King's retiring, when he entered with all his family and the whole
pack, who were escorting him. All at once all the dogs began to
bark, one louder than another, and ran away, passing like ghosts
along those great dark rooms, which rang with their hoarse cries.
The Princesses shouting, calling them, running everywhere after
them, completed a ridiculous spectacle, which made those august
persons very merry.--D'HEZECQUES, p. 49.]

She was frequently recognised on her way through France, and always with
marks of pleasure and respect.

It might have been supposed that the Princess would rejoice to leave
behind her the country which had been the scene of so many horrors and
such bitter suffering. But it was her birthplace, and it held the graves
of all she loved; and as she crossed the frontier she said to those
around her, "I leave France with regret, for I shall never cease to
consider it my country." She arrived in Vienna on 9th January, 1796, and
her first care was to attend a memorial service for her murdered
relatives. After many weeks of close retirement she occasionally began
to appear in public, and people looked with interest at the pale, grave,
slender girl of seventeen, dressed in the deepest mourning, over whose
young head such terrible storms had swept. The Emperor wished her to
marry the Archduke Charles of Austria, but her father and mother had,
even in the cradle, destined her hand for her cousin, the Duc
d'Angouleme, son of the Comte d'Artois, and the memory of their lightest
wish was law to her.

Her quiet determination entailed anger and opposition amounting to
persecution. Every effort was made to alienate her from her French
relations. She was urged to claim Provence, which had become her own if
Louis XVIII. was to be considered King of France. A pressure of opinion
was brought to bear upon her which might well have overawed so young a
girl. "I was sent for to the Emperor's cabinet," she writes, "where I
found the imperial family assembled. The ministers and chief imperial
counsellors were also present . . . . When the Emperor invited me to
express my opinion, I answered that to be able to treat fittingly of such
interests I thought, I ought to be surrounded not only by my mother's
relatives, but also by those of my father . . . . Besides, I said,
I was above all things French, and in entire subjection to the laws of
France, which had rendered me alternately the subject of the King my
father, the King my brother, and the King my uncle, and that I would
yield obedience to the latter, whatever might be his commands. This
declaration appeared very much to dissatisfy all who were present, and
when they observed that I was not to be shaken, they declared that my
right being independent of my will, my resistance would not be the
slightest obstacle to the measures they might deem it necessary to adopt
for the preservation of my interests."

In their anxiety to make a German princess of Marie Therese, her imperial
relations suppressed her French title as much as possible. When, with
some difficulty, the Duc de Grammont succeeded in obtaining an audience
of her, and used the familiar form of address, she smiled faintly, and
bade him beware. "Call me Madame de Bretagne, or de Bourgogne, or de
Lorraine," she said, "for here I am so identified with these provinces
--[which the Emperor wished her to claim from her uncle Louis XVIII.]--
that I shall end in believing in my own transformation." After these
discussions she was so closely watched, and so many restraints were
imposed upon her, that she was scarcely less a prisoner than in the old
days of the Temple, though her cage was this time gilded. Rescue,
however, was at hand.

In 1798 Louis XVIII. accepted a refuge offered to him at Mittau by the
Czar Paul, who had promised that he would grant his guest's first
request, whatever it might be. Louis begged the Czar to use his
influence with the Court of Vienna to allow his niece to join him.
"Monsieur, my brother," was Paul's answer, "Madame Royale shall be
restored to you, or I shall cease to be Paul I." Next morning the Czar
despatched a courier to Vienna with a demand for the Princess, so
energetically worded that refusal must have been followed by war.
Accordingly, in May, 1799, Madame Royale was allowed to leave the capital
which she had found so uncongenial an asylum.

In the old ducal castle of Mittau, the capital of Courland, Louis XVIII.
and his wife, with their nephews, the Ducs d'Angouleme

[The Duc d'Angonleme was quiet and reserved. He loved hunting as
means of killing time; was given to early hours and innocent
pleasures. He was a gentleman, and brave as became one. He had not
the "gentlemanly vices" of his brother, and was all the better for
it. He was ill educated, but had natural good sense, and would have
passed for having more than that had he cared to put forth
pretensions. Of all his family he was the one most ill spoken of,
and least deserving of it.--DOCTOR DORAN.]

and de Berri, were awaiting her, attended by the Abbe Edgeworth, as chief
ecclesiastic, and a little Court of refugee nobles and officers. With
them were two men of humbler position, who must have been even more
welcome to Madame Royale,--De Malden, who had acted as courier to Louis
XVI. during the flight to Varennes, and Turgi, who had waited on the
Princesses in the Temple. It was a sad meeting, though so long anxiously
desired, and it was followed on 10th June, 1799, by an equally sad
wedding,--exiles, pensioners on the bounty of the Russian monarch,
fulfilling an engagement founded, not on personal preference, but on
family policy and reverence for the wishes of the dead, the bride and
bridegroom had small cause for rejoicing. During the eighteen months of
tranquil seclusion which followed her marriage, the favourite occupation
of the Duchess was visiting and relieving the poor. In January, 1801,
the Czar Paul, in compliance with the demand of Napoleon, who was just
then the object of his capricious enthusiasm, ordered the French royal
family to leave Mittau. Their wanderings commenced on the 21st, a day of
bitter memories; and the young Duchess led the King to his carriage
through a crowd of men, women, and children, whose tears and blessings
attended them on their way.

[The Queen was too ill to travel. The Duc d'Angouleme took another
route to join a body of French gentlemen in arms for the Legitimist
cause.]

The exiles asked permission from the King of Prussia to settle in his
dominions, and while awaiting his answer at Munich they were painfully
surprised by the entrance of five old soldiers of noble birth, part of
the body-guard they had left behind at Mittau, relying on the protection
of Paul. The "mad Czar" had decreed their immediate expulsion, and,
penniless and almost starving, they made their way to Louis XVIII. All
the money the royal family possessed was bestowed on these faithful
servants, who came to them in detachments for relief, and then the
Duchess offered her diamonds to the Danish consul for an advance of two
thousand ducats, saying she pledged her property "that in our common
distress it may be rendered of real use to my uncle, his faithful
servants, and myself." The Duchess's consistent and unselfish kindness
procured her from the King, and those about him who knew her best, the
name of "our angel."

Warsaw was for a brief time the resting-place of the wanderers, but there
they were disturbed in 1803 by Napoleon's attempt to threaten and bribe
Louis XVIII. into abdication. It was suggested that refusal might bring
upon them expulsion from Prussia. "We are accustomed to suffering," was
the King's answer, "and we do not dread poverty. I would, trusting in
God, seek another asylum." In 1808, after many changes of scene, this
asylum was sought in England, Gosfield Hall, Essex, being placed at their
disposal by the Marquis of Buckingham. From Gosfield, the King moved to
Hartwell Hall, a fine old Elizabethan mansion rented from Sir George Lee
for L 500 a year. A yearly grant of L 24,000 was made to the exiled
family by the British Government, out of which a hundred and forty
persons were supported, the royal dinner-party generally numbering two
dozen.

At Hartwell, as in her other homes, the Duchess was most popular amongst
the poor. In general society she was cold and reserved, and she disliked
the notice of strangers. In March, 1814, the royalist successes at
Bordeaux paved the way for the restoration of royalty in France, and
amidst general sympathy and congratulation, with the Prince Regent
himself to wish them good fortune, the King, the Duchess, and their suite
left Hartwell in April, 1814. The return to France was as triumphant as
a somewhat half-hearted and doubtful enthusiasm could make it, and most
of such cordiality as there was fell to the share of the Duchess. As she
passed to Notre-Dame in May, 1814, on entering Paris, she was
vociferously greeted. The feeling of loyalty, however, was not much
longer-lived than the applause by which it was expressed; the Duchess had
scarcely effected one of the strongest wishes of her heart,--the
identification of what remained of her parents' bodies, and the
magnificent ceremony with which they were removed from the cemetery of
the Madeleine to the Abbey of St. Denis,--when the escape of Napoleon
from Elba in February,1815, scattered the royal family and their
followers like chaff before the wind. The Duc d'Angouleme, compelled to
capitulate at Toulouse, sailed from Cette in a Swedish vessel. The Comte
d'Artois, the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de Conde withdrew beyond the
frontier. The King fled from the capital. The Duchesse d'Angouleme,
then at Bordeaux celebrating the anniversary of the Proclamation of Louis
XVIII., alone of all her family made any stand against the general panic.
Day after day she mounted her horse and reviewed the National Guard. She
made personal and even passionate appeals to the officers and men,
standing firm, and prevailing on a handful of soldiers to remain by her,
even when the imperialist troops were on the other side of the river and
their cannon were directed against the square where the Duchess was
reviewing her scanty followers.

["It was the Duchesse d'Angouleme who saved you," said the gallant
General Clauzel, after these events, to a royalist volunteer;
"I could not bring myself to order such a woman to be fired upon,
at the moment when she was providing material for the noblest page
in her history."--"Fillia Dolorosa," vol. vii., p. 131.]

With pain and difficulty she was convinced that resistance was vain;
Napoleon's banner soon floated over Bordeaux; the Duchess issued a
farewell proclamation to her "brave Bordelais," and on the 1st April,
1815, she started for Pouillac, whence she embarked for Spain. During a
brief visit to England she heard that the reign of a hundred days was
over, and the 27th of July, 1815, saw her second triumphal return to the
Tuileries. She did not take up her abode there with any wish for State
ceremonies or Court gaieties. Her life was as secluded as her position
would allow. Her favourite retreat was the Pavilion, which had been
inhabited by her mother, and in her little oratory she collected relics
of her family, over which on the anniversaries of their deaths she wept
and prayed. In her daily drives through Paris she scrupulously avoided
the spot on which they had suffered; and the memory of the past seemed to
rule all her sad and self-denying life, both in what she did and what she
refrained from doing.

[She was so methodical and economical, though liberal in her
charities, that one of her regular evening occupations was to tear
off the seals from the letters she had received during the day, in
order that the wax might be melted down and sold; the produce made
one poor family "passing rich with forty pounds a year."--See "Filia
Dolorosa," vol. ii., p. 239.]

Her somewhat austere goodness was not of a nature to make her popular.
The few who really understood her loved her, but the majority of her
pleasure-seeking subjects regarded her either with ridicule or dread.
She is said to have taken no part in politics, and to have exerted no
influence in public affairs, but her sympathies were well known, and "the
very word liberty made her shudder;" like Madame Roland, she had seen "so
many crimes perpetrated under that name."

The claims of three pretended Dauphins--Hervagault, the son of the tailor
of St. Lo; Bruneau, son of the shoemaker of Vergin; and Naundorf or
Norndorff, the watchmaker somewhat troubled her peace, but never for a
moment obtained her sanction. Of the many other pseudo-Dauphins (said to
number a dozen and a half) not even the names remain. In February,1820,
a fresh tragedy befell the royal family in the assassination of the Duc
de Berri, brother-in-law of the Duchesse d'Angouleme, as he was seeing
his wife into her carriage at the door of the Opera-house. He was
carried into the theatre, and there the dying Prince and his wife were
joined by the Duchess, who remained till he breathed his last, and was
present when he, too, was laid in the Abbey of St. Denis. She was
present also when his son, the Duc de Bordeaux, was born, and hoped that
she saw in him a guarantee for the stability of royalty in France. In
September, 1824, she stood by the death-bed of Louis XVIII., and
thenceforward her chief occupation was directing the education of the
little Duc de Bordeaux, who generally resided with her at Villeneuve
l'Etang, her country house near St. Cloud. Thence she went in July,
1830, to the Baths of Vichy, stopping at Dijon on her way to Paris, and
visiting the theatre on the evening of the 27th. She was received with
"a roar of execrations and seditious cries," and knew only too well what
they signified. She instantly left the theatre and proceeded to Tonnere,
where she received news of the rising in Paris, and, quitting the town by
night, was driven to Joigny with three attendants. Soon after leaving
that place it was thought more prudent that the party should separate and
proceed on foot, and the Duchess and M. de Foucigny, disguised as
peasants, entered Versailles arm-in-arm, to obtain tidings of the King.
The Duchess found him at Rambouillet with her husband, the Dauphin, and
the King met her with a request for "pardon," being fully conscious, too
late, that his unwise decrees and his headlong flight had destroyed the
last hopes of his family. The act of abdication followed, by which the
prospect of royalty passed from the Dauphin and his wife, as well as from
Charles X.--Henri V. being proclaimed King, and the Duc d'Orleans (who
refused to take the boy monarch under his personal protection)
lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

Then began the Duchess's third expatriation. At Cherbourg the royal
family, accompanied by the little King without a kingdom, embarked in the
'Great Britain', which stood out to sea. The Duchess, remaining on deck
for a last look at the coast of France, noticed a brig which kept, she
thought, suspiciously near them.

"Who commands that vessel?" she inquired.

"Captain Thibault."

And what are his orders?"

"To fire into and sink the vessels in which we sail, should any attempt
be made to return to France."

Such was the farewell of their subjects to the House of Bourbon. The
fugitives landed at Weymouth; the Duchesse d'Angouleme under the title of
Comtesse de Marne, the Duchesse de Berri as Comtesse de Rosny, and her
son, Henri de Bordeaux, as Comte de Chambord, the title he retained till
his death, originally taken from the estate presented to him in infancy
by his enthusiastic people. Holyrood, with its royal and gloomy
associations, was their appointed dwelling. The Duc and Duchesse
d'Angouleme, and the daughter of the Duc de Berri, travelled thither by
land, the King and the young Comte de Chambord by sea. "I prefer my
route to that of my sister," observed the latter, "because I shall see the
coast of France again, and she will not."

The French Government soon complained that at Holyrood the exiles were
still too near their native land, and accordingly, in 1832, Charles X.,
with his son and grandson, left Scotland for Hamburg, while the Duchesse
d'Angouleme and her niece repaired to Vienna. The family were reunited
at Prague in 1833, where the birthday of the Comte de Chambord was
celebrated with some pomp and rejoicing, many Legitimists flocking
thither to congratulate him on attaining the age of thirteen, which the
old law of monarchical France had fixed as the majority of her princes.
Three years later the wanderings of the unfortunate family recommenced;
the Emperor Francis II. was dead, and his successor, Ferdinand, must
visit Prague to be crowned, and Charles X. feared that the presence of a
discrowned monarch might be embarrassing on such an occasion. Illness
and sorrow attended the exiles on their new journey, and a few months
after they were established in the Chateau of Graffenburg at Goritz,
Charles X. died of cholera, in his eightieth year. At Goritz, also, on
the 31st May, 1844, the Duchesse d'Angouleme, who had sat beside so many
death-beds, watched over that of her husband. Theirs had not been a
marriage of affection in youth, but they respected each other's virtues,
and to a great extent shared each other's tastes; banishment and
suffering had united them very closely, and of late years they had been
almost inseparable,--walking, riding, and reading together. When the
Duchesse d'Angouleme had seen her husband laid by his father's side in
the vault of the Franciscan convent, she, accompanied by her nephew and
niece, removed to Frohsdorf, where they spent seven tranquil years. Here
she was addressed as "Queen" by her household for the first time in her
life, but she herself always recognised Henri, Comte de Chambord, as her
sovereign. The Duchess lived to see the overthrow of Louis Philippe, the
usurper of the inheritance of her family. Her last attempt to exert
herself was a characteristic one. She tried to rise from a sick-bed in
order to attend the memorial service held for her mother, Marie
Antoinette, on the 16th October, the anniversary of her execution. But
her strength was not equal to the task; on the 19th she expired, with her
hand in that of the Comte de Chambord, and on 28th October, 1851, Marie
Therese Charlotte, Duchesse d'Angouleme, was buried in the Franciscan
convent.

The Ceremony of Expiation.

"In the spring of 1814 a ceremony took place in Paris at which I was
present because there was nothing in it that could be mortifying to a
French heart. The death of Louis XVI. had long been admitted to be one
of the most serious misfortunes of the Revolution. The Emperor Napoleon
never spoke of that sovereign but in terms of the highest respect, and
always prefixed the epithet unfortunate to his name. The ceremony to
which I allude was proposed by the Emperor of Russia and the King of
Prussia. It consisted of a kind of expiation and purification of the
spot on which Louis XVI. and his Queen were beheaded. I went to see the
ceremony, and I had a place at a window in the Hotel of Madame de
Remusat, next to the Hotel de Crillon, and what was termed the Hotel de
Courlande.

"The expiation took place on the 10th of April. The weather was
extremely fine and warm for the season. The Emperor of Russia and King
of Prussia, accompanied by Prince Schwartzenberg, took their station at
the entrance of the Rue Royale; the King of Prussia being on the right of
the Emperor Alexander, and Prince Schwartzenberg on his left. There was
a long parade, during which the Russian, Prussian and Austrian military
bands vied with each other in playing the air, 'Vive Henri IV.!'
The cavalry defiled past, and then withdrew into the Champs Elysees;
but the infantry ranged themselves round an altar which was raised in the
middle of the Place, and which was elevated on a platform having twelve
or fifteen steps. The Emperor of Russia alighted from his horse, and,
followed by the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke Constantine, Lord
Cathcart, and Prince Schwartzenberg, advanced to the altar. When the
Emperor had nearly reached the altar the "Te Deum" commenced. At the
moment of the benediction, the sovereigns and persons who accompanied
them, as well as the twenty-five thousand troops who covered the Place,
all knelt down. The Greek priest presented the cross to the Emperor
Alexander, who kissed it; his example was followed by the individuals who
accompanied him, though they were not of the Greek faith. On rising, the
Grand Duke Constantine took off his hat, and immediately salvoes of
artillery were heard."

NOTE.

The following titles have the signification given below during the period
covered by this work:

MONSEIGNEUR........... The Dauphin.

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