Marie-Antoinette.
On Monday the Fourteenth of October, 1793, a Cause is pending in
the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as
these old stone-walls never witnessed: the Trial of
Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of Queens, now tarnished,
defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier Tinville’s
Judgment-bar; answering for her life! The Indictment was
delivered her last night.[683] To such changes of human fortune
what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate.
There are few Printed things one meets with, of such tragic
almost ghastly significance as those bald Pages of the _Bulletin
du Tribunal Révolutionnaire_, which bear title, _Trial of the
Widow Capet_. Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse; like the
pale kingdoms of Dis! Plutonic Judges, Plutonic Tinville;
encircled, nine times, with Styx and Lethe, with Fire-Phlegethon
and Cocytus named of Lamentation! The very witnesses summoned are
like Ghosts: exculpatory, inculpatory, they themselves are all
hovering over death and doom; they are known, in our imagination,
as the prey of the Guillotine. Tall _ci-devant_ Count d’Estaing,
anxious to shew himself Patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly, who,
when asked If he knows the Accused, answers with a reverent
inclination towards her, ‘Ah, yes, I know Madame.’ Ex-Patriots
are here, sharply dealt with, as Procureur Manuel; Ex-Ministers,
shorn of their splendour. We have cold Aristocratic impassivity,
faithful to itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity, of Patriot
Corporals, Patriot Washerwomen, who have much to say of Plots,
Treasons, August Tenth, old Insurrection of Women. For all now
has become a crime, in her who has _lost_.
Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of
extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her
look, they say, as that hideous Indictment was reading, continued
calm; “she was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one
plays on the Piano.” You discern, not without interest, across
that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself
queenlike. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of Laconic
brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing
to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. ‘You persist then in
denial?’—‘My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and
I persist in that.’ Scandalous Hébert has borne his testimony as
to many things: as to one thing, concerning Marie-Antoinette and
her little Son,—wherewith Human Speech had better not further be
soiled. She has answered Hébert; a Juryman begs to observe that
she has not answered as to this. ‘I have not answered,’ she
exclaims with noble emotion, ‘because Nature refuses to answer
such a charge brought against a Mother. I appeal to all the
Mothers that are here.’ Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke
out into something almost like swearing at the brutish
blockheadism of this Hébert;[684] on whose foul head his foul lie
has recoiled. At four o’clock on Wednesday morning, after two
days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging, and other
darkening of counsel, the result comes out: Sentence of Death.
‘Have you anything to say?’ The Accused shook her head, without
speech. Night’s candles are burning out; and with her too Time is
finishing, and it will be Eternity and Day. This Hall of
Tinville’s is dark, ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently
she withdraws from it, to die.
Two Processions, or Royal Progresses, three-and-twenty years
apart, have often struck us with a strange feeling of contrast.
The first is of a beautiful Archduchess and Dauphiness, quitting
her Mother’s City, at the age of Fifteen; towards hopes such as
no other Daughter of Eve then had: “On the morrow,” says Weber an
eye witness, “the Dauphiness left Vienna. The whole City crowded
out; at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared: you
saw her sunk back into her carriage; her face bathed in tears;
hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands;
several times putting out her head to see yet again this Palace
of her Fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned
her regret, her gratitude to the good Nation, which was crowding
here to bid her farewell. Then arose not only tears; but piercing
cries, on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to
such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail,
in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last Courier that
followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away.”[685]
The young imperial Maiden of Fifteen has now become a worn
discrowned Widow of Thirty-eight; grey before her time: this is
the last Procession: “Few minutes after the Trial ended, the
drums were beating to arms in all Sections; at sunrise the armed
force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of
the Bridges, in the Squares, Crossways, all along from the Palais
de Justice to the Place de la Révolution. By ten o’clock,
numerous patrols were circulating in the Streets; thirty thousand
foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie-Antoinette
was brought out. She had on an undress of _piqué blanc:_ she was
led to the place of execution, in the same manner as an ordinary
criminal; bound, on a Cart; accompanied by a Constitutional
Priest in Lay dress; escorted by numerous detachments of infantry
and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her
road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her
countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the
cries of _Vive la République_ and _Down with Tyranny_, which
attended her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke
little to her Confessor. The tricolor Streamers on the housetops
occupied her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honoré;
she also noticed the Inscriptions on the house-fronts. On
reaching the Place de la Révolution, her looks turned towards the
_Jardin National_, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave
signs of lively emotion. She mounted the Scaffold with courage
enough; at a quarter past Twelve, her head fell; the Executioner
shewed it to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of
“_Vive la République_.”[686]