[I had just received this letter from th_Court Memoirs of France Series

At the moment that I was going to express my gratitude to the Queen I heard a tapping at the door of my room, which opened upon the Queen's inner corridor. I opened it; it was the King. I was confused; he perceived it, and said to me, kindly: "I alarm you, Madame Campan; I come, however, to comfort you; the Queen has told me how much she is hurt at the injustice of several persons towards you. But how is it that you complain of injustice and calumny when you see that we are victims of them? In some of your companions it is jealousy; in the people belonging to the Court it is anxiety. Our situation is so disastrous, and we have met with so much ingratitude and treachery, that the apprehensions of those who love us are excusable! I could quiet them by telling them all the secret services you perform for us daily; but I will not do it. Out of good-will to you they would repeat all I should say, and you would be lost with the Assembly. It is much better, both for you and for us, that you should be thought a constitutionalist. It has been mentioned to me a hundred times already; I have never contradicted it; but I come to give you my word that if we are fortunate enough to see an end of all this, I will, at the Queen's residence, and in the presence of my brothers, relate the important services you have rendered us, and I will recompense you and your son for them." I threw myself at the King's feet and kissed his hand. He raised me up, saying, "Come, come, do not grieve; the Queen, who loves you, confides in you as I do."

Down to the day of the acceptance it was impossible to introduce Barnave into the interior of the palace; but when the Queen was free from the inner guard she said she would see him. The very great precautions which it was necessary for the deputy to take in order to conceal his connection with the King and Queen compelled them to spend two hours waiting for him in one of the corridors of the Tuileries, and all in vain. The first day that he was to be admitted, a man whom Barnave knew to be dangerous having met him in the courtyard of the palace, he determined to cross it without stopping, and walked in the gardens in order to lull suspicion. I was desired to wait for Barnave at a little door belonging to the entresols of the palace, with my hand upon the open lock. I was in that position for an hour. The King came to me frequently, and always to speak to me of the uneasiness which a servant belonging to the Chateau, who was a patriot, gave him. He came again to ask me whether I had heard the door called de Decret opened. I assured him nobody had been in the corridor, and he became easy. He was dreadfully apprehensive that his connection with Barnave would be discovered. "It would," said the King, "be a ground for grave accusations, and the unfortunate man would be lost." I then ventured to remind his Majesty that as Barnave was not the only one in the secret of the business which brought him in contact with their Majesties, one of his colleagues might be induced to speak of the association with which they were honoured, and that in letting them know by my presence that I also was informed of it, a risk was incurred of removing from those gentlemen part of the responsibility of the secret. Upon this observation the King quitted me hastily and returned a moment afterwards with the Queen. "Give me your place," said she; "I will wait for him in my turn. You have convinced the King. We must not increase in their eyes the number of persons informed of their communications with us."

The police of M. de Laporte, intendant of the civil list, apprised him, as early as the latter end of 1791, that a man belonging to the King's offices who had set up as a pastrycook at the Palais Royal was about to resume the duties of his situation, which had devolved upon him again on the death of one who held it for life; that he was so furious a Jacobin that he had dared to say it would be a good thing for France if the King's days were shortened. His duty was confined to making the pastry; he was closely watched by the head officers of the kitchen, who were devoted to his Majesty; but it is so easy to introduce a subtle poison into made dishes that it was determined the King and Queen should eat only plain roast meat in future; that their bread should be brought to them by M. Thierry de Ville-d'Avray, intendant of the smaller apartments, and that he should likewise take upon himself to supply the wine. The King was fond of pastry; I was directed to order some, as if for myself, sometimes of one pastry-cook, and sometimes of another. The pounded sugar, too, was kept in my room. The King, the Queen, and Madame Elisabeth ate together, and nobody remained to wait on them. Each had a dumb waiter and a little bell to call the servants when they were wanted. M. Thierry used himself to bring me their Majesties' bread and wine, and I locked them up in a private cupboard in the King's closet on the ground floor. As soon as the King sat down to table I took in the pastry and bread. All was hidden under the table lest it might be necessary to have the servants in. The King thought it dangerous as well as distressing to show any apprehension of attempts against his person, or any mistrust of his officers of the kitchen. As he never drank a whole bottle of wine at his meals (the Princesses drank nothing but water), he filled up that out of which he had drunk about half from the bottle served up by the officers of his butlery. I took it away after dinner. Although he never ate any other pastry than that which I brought, he took care in the same manner that it should seem that he had eaten of that served at table. The lady who succeeded me found this duty all regulated, and she executed it in the same manner; the public never was in possession of these particulars, nor of the apprehensions which gave rise to them. At the end of three or four months the police of M. de Laporte gave notice that nothing more was to be dreaded from that sort of plot against the King's life; that the plan was entirely changed; and that all the blows now to be struck would be directed as much against the throne as against the person of the sovereign.

There are others besides myself who know that at this time one of the things about which the Queen most desired to be satisfied was the opinion of the famous Pitt. She would sometimes say to me, "I never pronounce the name of Pitt without feeling a chill like that of death." (I repeat here her very expressions.) "That man is the mortal enemy of France; and he takes a dreadful revenge for the impolitic support given by the Cabinet of Versailles to the American insurgents. He wishes by our destruction to guarantee the maritime power of his country forever against the efforts made by the King to improve his marine power and their happy results during the last war. He knows that it is not only the King's policy but his private inclination to be solicitous about his fleets, and that the most active step he has taken during his whole reign was to visit the port of Cherbourg. Pitt had served the cause of the French Revolution from the first disturbances; he will perhaps serve it until its annihilation. I will endeavour to learn to what point he intends to lead us, and I am sending M.----- to London for that purpose. He has been intimately connected with Pitt, and they have often had political conversations respecting the French Government. I will get him to make him speak out, at least so far as such a man can speak out." Some time afterwards the Queen told me that her secret envoy was returned from London, and that all he had been able to wring from Pitt, whom he found alarmingly reserved, was that he would not suffer the French monarchy to perish; that to suffer the revolutionary spirit to erect an organised republic in France would be a great error, affecting the tranquillity of Europe. "Whenever," said she, "Pitt expressed himself upon the necessity of supporting monarchy in France, he maintained the most profound silence upon what concerns the monarch. The result of these conversations is anything but encouraging; but, even as to that monarchy which he wishes to save, will he have means and strength to save it if he suffers us to fall?"

The death of the Emperor Leopold took place on the 1st of March, 1792. When the news of this event reached the Tuileries, the Queen was gone out. Upon her return I put the letter containing it into her hands. She exclaimed that the Emperor had been poisoned; that she had remarked and preserved a newspaper, in which, in an article upon the sitting of the Jacobins, at the time when the Emperor Leopold declared for the coalition, it was said, speaking of him, that a pie-crust would settle that matter. At this period Barnave obtained the Queen's consent that he should read all the letters she should write. He was fearful of private correspondences that might hamper the plan marked out for her; he mistrusted her Majesty's sincerity on this point; and the diversity of counsels, and the necessity of yielding, on the one hand, to some of the views of the constitutionalists, and on the other, to those of the French Princes, and even of foreign Courts, were unfortunately the circumstances which most rapidly impelled the Court towards its ruin.

However, the emigrants showed great apprehensions of the consequences which might follow in the interior from a connection with the constitutionalists, whom they described as a party existing only in idea, and totally without means of repairing their errors. The Jacobins were preferred to them, because, said they, there would be no treaty to be made with any one at the moment of extricating the King and his family from the abyss in which they were plunged.

CHAPTER VII.

In the beginning of the year 1792, a worthy priest requested a private interview with me. He had learned the existence of a new libel by Madame de Lamotte. He told me that the people who came from London to get it printed in Paris only desired gain, and that they were ready to deliver the manuscript to him for a thousand louis, if he could find any friend of the Queen disposed to make that sacrifice for her peace; that he had thought of me, and if her Majesty would give him the twenty-four thousand francs, he would hand the manuscript to me.

I communicated this proposal to the Queen, who rejected it, and desired me to answer that at the time when she had power to punish the hawkers of these libels she deemed them so atrocious and incredible that she despised them too much to stop them; that if she were imprudent and weak enough to buy a single one of them, the Jacobins might possibly discover the circumstance through their espionage; that were this libel brought up, it would be printed nevertheless, and would be much more dangerous when they apprised the public of the means she had used to suppress it.

Baron d'Aubier, gentleman-in-ordinary to the King, and my particular friend, had a good memory and a clear way of communicating the substance of the debates and decrees of the National Assembly. I went daily to the Queen's apartments to repeat all this to the King, who used to say, on seeing me, "Ah! here's the Postillon par Calais,"--a newspaper of the time.

M. d'Aubier one day said to me: "The Assembly has been much occupied with an information laid by the workmen of the Sevres manufactory. They brought to the President's office a bundle of pamphlets which they said were the life of Marie Antoinette. The director of the manufactory was ordered up to the bar, and declared he had received orders to burn the printed sheets in question in the furnaces used for baking his china."

While I was relating this business to the Queen the King coloured and held his head down over his plate. The Queen said to him, "Do you know anything about this, Sire?" The King made no answer. Madame Elisabeth requested him to explain what it meant. Louis was still silent. I withdrew hastily. A few minutes afterwards the Queen came to my room and informed me that the King, out of regard for her, had purchased the whole edition struck off from the manuscript which I had mentioned to her, and that M. de Laporte had not been able to devise any more secret way of destroying the work than that of having it burnt at Sevres, among two hundred workmen, one hundred and eighty of whom must, in all probability, be Jacobins! She told me she had concealed her vexation from the King; that he was in consternation, and that she could say nothing, since his good intentions and his affection for her had been the cause of the mistake.

[M. de Laporte had by order of the King bought up the whole edition of the "Memoirs" of the notorious Madame de Lamotte against the Queen. Instead of destroying them immediately, he shut them up in one of the closets in his house, The alarming and rapid growth of the rebellion, the arrogance of the crowd of brigands, who in great measure composed the populace of Paris, and the fresh excesses daily resulting from it, rendered the intendant of the civil list apprehensive that some mob might break into his house, carry off these "Memoirs," and spread them among the public. In order to prevent this he gave orders to have the "Memoirs" burnt with every necessary precaution; and the clerk who received the order entrusted the execution of it to a man named Riston, a dangerous Intriguer, formerly an advocate of Nancy, who had a twelve-month before escaped the gallows by favour of the new principles and the patriotism of the new tribunals, although convicted of forging the great seal, and fabricating decrees of the council. This Riston, finding himself entrusted with a commission which concerned her Majesty, and the mystery attending which bespoke something of importance, was less anxious to execute it faithfully than to make a parade of this mark of confidence. On the 30th of May, at ten in the morning, he had the sheets carried to the porcelain manufactory at Sevres, in a cart which he himself accompanied, and made a large fire of them before all the workmen, who were expressly forbidden to approach it. All these precautions, and the suspicions to which they gave rise, under such critical circumstances, gave so much publicity to this affair that it was denounced to the Assembly that very night. Brissot, and the whole Jacobin party, with equal effrontery and vehemence, insisted that the papers thus secretly burnt could be no other than the registers and documents of the correspondence of the Austrian committee. M. de Laporte was ordered to the bar, and there gave the most precise account of the circumstances. Riston was also called up, and confirmed M. de Laporte's deposition. But these explanations, however satisfactory, did not calm the violent ferment raised in the Assembly by this affair.--"Memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville."]

Some time afterwards the Assembly received a denunciation against M. de Montmorin. The ex-minister was accused of having neglected forty despatches from M. Genet, the charge d'affaires from France in Russia, not having even unsealed them, because M. Genet acted on constitutional principles. M. de Montmorin appeared at the bar to answer this accusation. Whatever distress I might feel in obeying the order I had received from the King to go and give him an account of the sitting, I thought I ought not to fail in doing so. But instead of giving my brother his family name, I merely said "your Majesty's charge d'affaires at St. Petersburg."

The King did me the favour to say that he noticed a reserve in my account, of which he approved. The Queen condescended to add a few obliging remarks to those of the King. However, my office of journalist gave me in this instance so much pain that I took an opportunity, when the King was expressing his satisfaction to me at the manner in which I gave him this daily account, to tell him that its merits belonged wholly to M. d'Aubier; and I ventured to request the King to suffer that excellent man to give him an account of the sittings himself. I assured the King that if he would permit it, that gentleman might proceed to the Queen's apartments through mine unseen; the King consented to the arrangement. Thenceforward M. d'Aubier gave the King repeated proofs of zeal and attachment.

The Cure of St. Eustache ceased to be the Queen's confessor when he took the constitutional oath. I do not remember the name of the ecclesiastic who succeeded him; I only know that he was conducted into her apartments with the greatest mystery. Their Majesties did not perform their Easter devotions in public, because they could neither declare for the constitutional clergy, nor act so as to show that they were against them.

The Queen did perform her Easter devotions in 1792; but she went to the chapel attended only by myself. She desired me beforehand to request one of my relations, who was her chaplain, to celebrate a mass for her at five o'clock in the morning. It was still dark; she gave me her arm, and I lighted her with a taper. I left her alone at the chapel door. She did not return to her room until the dawn of day.

Dangers increased daily. The Assembly were strengthened in the eyes of the people by the hostilities of the foreign armies and the army of the Princes. The communication with the latter party became more active; the Queen wrote almost every day. M. de Goguelat possessed her confidence for all correspondence with the foreign parties, and I was obliged to have him in my apartments; the Queen asked for him very frequently, and at times which she could not previously appoint.

All parties were exerting themselves either to ruin or to save the King. One day I found the Queen extremely agitated; she told me she no longer knew where she was; that the leaders of the Jacobins offered themselves to her through the medium of Dumouriez; or that Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, had come and offered himself to her; that she had granted him an audience; that when alone with her, he had thrown himself at her feet, and told her that he had drawn the 'bonnet rouge' over his head to the very ears; but that he neither was nor could be a Jacobin; that the Revolution had been suffered to extend even to that rabble of destroyers who, thinking of nothing but pillage, were ripe for anything, and might furnish the Assembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the remains of a throne already but too much shaken. Whilst speaking with the utmost ardour he seized the Queen's hand and kissed it with transport, exclaiming, "Suffer yourself to be saved!" The Queen told me that the protestations of a traitor were not to be relied on; that the whole of his conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest course was not to trust to it;

[The sincerity of General Dumouriez cannot be doubted in this instance. The second volume of his Memoirs shows how unjust the mistrust and reproaches of the Queen were. By rejecting his services, Marie Antoinette deprived herself of her only remaining support. He who saved France in the defiles of Argonne would perhaps have saved France before the 20th of June, had he obtained the full confidence of Louis XVI. and the Queen.--NOTE BY THE EDITOR.]

that, moreover, the Princes particularly recommended that no confidence should be placed in any proposition emanating from within the kingdom; that the force without became imposing; and that it was better to rely upon their success, and upon the protection due from Heaven to a sovereign so virtuous as Louis XVI. and to so just a cause.

The constitutionalists, on their part, saw that there had been nothing more than a pretence of listening to them. Barnave's last advice was as to the means of continuing, a few weeks longer, the Constitutional Guard, which had been denounced to the Assembly, and was to be disbanded. The denunciation against the Constitutional Guard affected only its staff, and the Duc de Brissac. Barnave wrote to the Queen that the staff of the guard was already attacked; that the Assembly was about to pass a decree to reduce it; and he entreated her to prevail on the King, the very instant the decree should appear, to form the staff afresh of persons whose names he sent her. Barnave said that all who were set down in it passed for decided Jacobins, but were not so in fact; that they, as well as himself, were in despair at seeing the monarchical government attacked; that they had learnt to dissemble their sentiments, and that it would be at least a fortnight before the Assembly could know them well, and certainly before it could succeed in making them unpopular; that it would be necessary to take advantage of that short space of time to get away from Paris, immediately after their nomination. The Queen was of opinion that she ought not to yield to this advice. The Duc de Brissac was sent to Orleans, and the guard was disbanded.

Barnave, seeing that the Queen did not follow his counsel in anything, and convinced that she placed all her reliance on assistance from abroad, determined to quit Paris. He obtained a last audience. "Your misfortunes, Madame," said he, "and those which I anticipate for France, determined me to sacrifice myself to serve you. I see, however, that my advice does not agree with the views of your Majesties. I augur but little advantage from the plan you are induced to pursue,--you are too remote from your succours; you will be lost before they reach you. Most ardently do I wish I may be mistaken in so lamentable a prediction; but I am sure to pay with my head for the interest your misfortunes have raised in me, and the services I have sought to render you. I request, for my sole reward, the honour of kissing your hand." The Queen, her eyes suffused with tears, granted him that favour, and remained impressed with a favourable idea of his sentiments. Madame Elisabeth participated in this opinion, and the two Princesses frequently spoke of Barnave. The Queen also received M. Duport several times, but with less mystery. Her connection with the constitutional deputies transpired. Alexandre de Lameth was the only one of the three who survived the vengeance of the Jacobins.

[Barnave was arrested at Grenoble. He remained in prison in that town fifteen months, and his friends began to hope that he would be forgotten, when an order arrived that he should be removed to Paris. At first he was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but transferred to the Conciergerie, and almost immediately taken before the revolutionary tribunal. He appeared there with wonderful firmness, summed up the services he had rendered to the cause of liberty with his usual eloquence, and made such an impression upon the numerous auditors that, although accustomed to behold only conspirators worthy of death in all those who appeared before the tribunal, they themselves considered his acquittal certain. The decree of death was read amidst the deepest silence; but Barnave'a firmness was immovable. When he left the court, he cast upon the judges, the jurors, and the public looks expressive of contempt and indignation. He was led to his fate with the respected Duport du Tertre, one of the last ministers of Louis XVI. when he had ascended the scaffold, Barnave stamped, raised his eyes to heaven, and said: "This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!" He fell on the 29th of October, 1793, in the thirty-second year of his age; his bust was placed in the Grenoble Museum. The Consular Government placed his statue next to that of Vergniaud, on the great staircase of the palace of the Senate.--"Biographie de Bruxelles."]

The National Guard, which succeeded the King's Guard, having occupied the gates of the Tuileries, all who came to see the Queen were insulted with impunity. Menacing cries were uttered aloud even in the Tuileries; they called for the destruction of the throne, and the murder of the sovereign; the grossest insults were offered by the very lowest of the mob.

About this time the King fell into a despondent state, which amounted almost to physical helplessness. He passed ten successive days without uttering a single word, even in the bosom of his family; except, indeed, when playing at backgammon after dinner with Madame Elisabeth. The Queen roused him from this state, so fatal at a critical period, by throwing herself at his feet, urging every alarming idea, and employing every affectionate expression. She represented also what he owed to his family; and told him that if they were doomed to fall they ought to fall honourably, and not wait to be smothered upon the floor of their apartment.

About the 15th of June, 1792, the King refused his sanction to the two decrees ordaining the deportation of priests and the formation of a camp of twenty thousand men under the walls of Paris. He himself wished to sanction them, and said that the general insurrection only waited for a pretence to burst forth. The Queen insisted upon the veto, and reproached herself bitterly when this last act of the constitutional authority had occasioned the day of the 20th of June.

A few days previously about twenty thousand men had gone to the Commune to announce that, on the 20th, they would plant the tree of liberty at the door of the National Assembly, and present a petition to the King respecting the veto which he had placed upon the decree for the deportation of the priests. This dreadful army crossed the garden of the Tuileries, and marched under the Queen's windows; it consisted of people who called themselves the citizens of the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau. Clothed in filthy rags, they bore a most terrifying appearance, and even infected the air. People asked each other where such an army could come from; nothing so disgusting had ever before appeared in Paris.

On the 20th of June this mob thronged about the Tuileries in still greater numbers, armed with pikes, hatchets, and murderous instruments of all kinds, decorated with ribbons of the national colours, Shouting, "The nation for ever! Down with the veto!" The King was without guards. Some of these desperadoes rushed up to his apartment; the door was about to be forced in, when the King commanded that it should be opened. Messieurs de Bougainville, d'Hervilly, de Parois, d'Aubier, Acloque, Gentil, and other courageous men who were in the apartment of M. de Septeuil, the King's first valet de chambre, instantly ran to his Majesty's apartment. M. de Bougainville, seeing the torrent furiously advancing, cried out, "Put the King in the recess of the window, and place benches before him." Six royalist grenadiers of the battalion of the Filles Saint Thomas made their way by an inner staircase, and ranged themselves before the benches. The order given by M. de Bougainville saved the King from the blades of the assassins, among whom was a Pole named Lazousky, who was to strike the first blow. The King's brave defenders said, "Sire, fear nothing." The King's reply is well known: "Put your hand upon my heart, and you will perceive whether I am afraid." M. Vanot, commandant of battalion, warded off a blow aimed by a wretch against the King; a grenadier of the Filles Saint Thomas parried a sword-thrust made in the same direction. Madame Elisabeth ran to her brother's apartments; when she reached the door she heard loud threats of death against the Queen: they called for the head of the Austrian. "Ah! let them think I am the Queen," she said to those around her, "that she may have time to escape."

The Queen could not join the King; she was in the council chamber, where she had been placed behind the great table to protect her, as much as possible, against the approach of the barbarians. Preserving a noble and becoming demeanour in this dreadful situation, she held the Dauphin before her, seated upon the table. Madame was at her side; the Princesse de Lamballe, the Princesse de Tarente, Madame de la Roche-Aymon, Madame de Tourzel, and Madame de Mackau surrounded her. She had fixed a tricoloured cockade, which one of the National Guard had given her, upon her head. The poor little Dauphin was, like the King, shrouded in an enormous red cap. The horde passed in files before the table;

[One of the circumstances of the 20th of June which most vexed the King's friends being that of his wearing the bonnet rouge nearly three hours, I ventured to ask him for some explanation of a fact so strikingly in contrast with the extraordinary intrepidity shown by his Majesty during that horrible day. This was his answer: "The cries of 'The nation for ever!' violently increasing around me, and seeming to be addressed to me, I replied that the nation had not a warmer friend than myself. Upon this an ill-looking man, making his way through the crowd, came up to me and said, rather roughly, 'Well, if you speak the truth, prove it by putting on this red cap.' 'I consent,' replied I. One or two of them immediately came forward and placed the cap upon my hair, for it was too small for my head. I was convinced, I knew not why, that his intention was merely to place the cap upon my head for a moment, and then to take it off again; and I was so completely taken up with what was passing before me that I did not feel whether the cap did or did not remain upon my hair. I was so little aware of it that when I returned to my room I knew only from being told so that it was still there. I was very much surprised to find it upon my head, and was the more vexed at it because I might have taken it off immediately without the smallest difficulty. But I am satisfied that if I had hesitated to consent to its being placed upon my head the drunken fellow who offered it to me would have thrust his pike into my stomach."--"Memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville."]

the sort of standards which they carried were symbols of the most atrocious barbarity. There was one representing a gibbet, to which a dirty doll was suspended; the words "Marie Antoinette a la lanterne" were written beneath it. Another was a board, to which a bullock's heart was fastened, with "Heart of Louis XVI." written round it. And a third showed the horn of an ox, with an obscene inscription.

One of the most furious Jacobin women who marched with these wretches stopped to give vent to a thousand imprecations against the Queen. Her Majesty asked whether she had ever seen her. She replied that she had not. Whether she had done her any, personal wrong? Her answer was the same; but she added:

"It is you who have caused the misery of the nation."

"You have been told so," answered the Queen; "you are deceived. As the wife of the King of France, and mother of the Dauphin, I am a French-woman; I shall never see my own country again, I can be happy or unhappy only in France; I was happy when you loved me."

The fury began to weep, asked her pardon, and said, "It was because I did not know you; I see that you are good."

Santerre, the monarch of the faubourgs, made his subjects file off as quickly as he could; and it was thought at the time that he was ignorant of the object of this insurrection, which was the murder of the royal family. However, it was eight o'clock in the evening before the palace was completely cleared. Twelve deputies, impelled by attachment to the King's person, ranged themselves near him at the commencement of the insurrection; but the deputation from the Assembly did not reach the Tuileries until six in the evening; all the doors of the apartments were broken. The Queen pointed out to the deputies the state of the King's palace, and the disgraceful manner in which his asylum had been violated under the very eyes of the Assembly; she saw that Merlin de Thionville was so much affected as to shed tears while she spoke.

"You weep, M. Merlin," said she to him, "at seeing the King and his family so cruelly treated by a people whom he always wished to make happy."

"True, Madame," replied Merlin; "I weep for the misfortunes of a beautiful and feeling woman, the mother of a family; but do not mistake, not one of my tears falls for either King or Queen; I hate kings and queens,--it is my religion."

The Queen could not appreciate this madness, and saw all that was to be apprehended by persons who evinced it.

All hope was gone, and nothing was thought of but succour from abroad. The Queen appealed to her family and the King's brothers; her letters probably became more pressing, and expressed apprehensions upon the tardiness of relief. Her Majesty read me one to herself from the Archduchess Christina, Gouvernante of the Low Countries: she reproached the Queen for some of her expressions, and told her that those out of France were at least as much alarmed as herself at the King's situation and her own; but that the manner of attempting to assist her might either save her or endanger her safety; and that the members of the coalition were bound to act prudently, entrusted as they were with interests so dear to them.

The 14th of July, 1792, fixed by the constitution as the anniversary of the independence of the nation drew near. The King and Queen were compelled to make their appearance on the occasion; aware that the plot of the 20th of June had their assassination for its object, they had no doubt but that their death was determined on for the day of this national festival. The Queen was recommended, in order to give the King's friends time to defend him if the attack should be made, to guard him against the first stroke of a dagger by making him wear a breastplate. I was directed to get one made in my apartments: it was composed of fifteen folds of Italian taffety, and formed into an under-waistcoat and a wide belt. This breastplate was tried; it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several balls were turned aside by it. When it was completed the difficulty was to let the King try it on without running the risk of being surprised. I wore the immense heavy waistcoat as an under-petticoat for three days without being able to find a favourable moment. At length the King found an opportunity one morning to pull off his coat in the Queen's chamber and try on the breastplate.

The Queen was in bed; the King pulled me gently by the gown, and drew me as far as he could from the Queen's bed, and said to me, in a very low tone of voice: "It is to satisfy her that I submit to this inconvenience: they will not assassinate me; their scheme is changed; they will put me to death another way." The Queen heard the King whispering to me, and when he was gone out she asked me what he had said. I hesitated to answer; she insisted that I should, saying that nothing must be concealed from her, and that she was resigned upon every point.

When she was informed of the King's remark she told me she had guessed it, that he had long since observed to her that all which was going forward in France was an imitation of the revolution in England in the time of Charles I., and that he was incessantly reading the history of that unfortunate monarch in order that he might act better than Charles had done at a similar crisis. "I begin to be fearful of the King's being brought to trial," continued the Queen; "as to me, I am a foreigner; they will assassinate me. What will become of my poor children?"

These sad ejaculations were followed by a torrent of tears. I wished to give her an antispasmodic; she refused it, saying that only happy women could feel nervous; that the cruel situation to which she was reduced rendered these remedies useless. In fact, the Queen, who during her happier days was frequently attacked by hysterical disorders, enjoyed more uniform health when all the faculties of her soul were called forth to support her physical strength.

I had prepared a corset for her, for the same purpose as the King's under-waistcoat, without her knowledge; but she would not make use of it; all my entreaties, all my tears, were in vain. "If the factions assassinate me," she replied, "it will be a fortunate event for me; they will deliver me from a most painful existence." A few days after the King had tried on his breastplate I met him on a back staircase. I drew back to let him pass. He stopped and took my hand; I wished to kiss his; he would not suffer it, but drew me towards him by the hand, and kissed both my cheeks without saying a single word.

The fear of another attack upon the Tuileries occasioned scrupulous search among the King's papers

I burnt almost all those belonging to the Queen. She put her family letters, a great deal of correspondence which she thought it necessary to preserve for the history of the era of the Revolution, and particularly Barnave's letters and her answers, of which she had copies, into a portfolio, which she entrusted to M. de J----. That gentleman was unable to save this deposit, and it was burnt. The Queen left a few papers in her secretaire. Among them were instructions to Madame de Tourzel, respecting the dispositions of her children and the characters and abilities of the sub-governesses under that lady's orders. This paper, which the Queen drew up at the time of Madame de Tourzel's appointment, with several letters from Maria Theresa, filled with the best advice and instructions, was printed after the 10th of August by order of the Assembly in the collection of papers found in the secretaires of the King and Queen.

Her Majesty had still, without reckoning the income of the month, one hundred and forty thousand francs in gold. She was desirous of depositing the whole of it with me; but I advised her to retain fifteen hundred louis, as a sum of rather considerable amount might be suddenly necessary for her. The King had an immense quantity of papers, and unfortunately conceived the idea of privately making, with the assistance of a locksmith who had worked with him above ten years, a place of concealment in an inner corridor of his apartments. The place of concealment, but for the man's information, would have been long undiscovered? The wall in which it was made was painted to imitate large stones, and the opening was entirely concealed among the brown grooves which formed the shaded part of these painted stones. But even before this locksmith had denounced what was afterwards called the iron closet to the Assembly, the Queen was aware that he had talked of it to some of his friends; and that this man, in whom the King from long habit placed too much confidence, was a Jacobin. She warned the King of it, and prevailed on him to fill a very large portfolio with all the papers he was most interested in preserving, and entrust it to me. She entreated him in my presence to leave nothing in this closet; and the King, in order to quiet her, told her that he had left nothing there. I would have taken the portfolio and carried it to my apartment, but it was too heavy for me to lift. The King said he would carry it himself; I went before to open the doors for him. When he placed the portfolio in my inner closet he merely said, "The Queen will tell you what it contains." Upon my return to the Queen I put the question to her, deeming, from what the King had said, that it was necessary I should know. "They are," the Queen answered me, "such documents as would be most dangerous to the King should they go so far as to proceed to a trial against him. But what he wishes me to tell you is, that the portfolio contains a 'proces-verbal' of a cabinet council, in which the King gave his opinion against the war. He had it signed by all the ministers, and, in case of a trial, he trusts that this document will be very useful to him." I asked the Queen to whom she thought I ought to commit the portfolio. "To whom you please," answered she; "you alone are answerable for it. Do not quit the palace even during your vacation months: there may be circumstances under which it would be very desirable that we should be able to have it instantly."

At this period M. de La Fayette, who had probably given up the idea of establishing a republic in France similar to that of the United States, and was desirous to support the first constitution which he had sworn to defend, quitted his army and came to the Assembly for the purpose of supporting by his presence and by an energetic speech a petition signed by twenty thousand citizens against the late violation of the residence of the King and his family. The General found the constitutional party powerless, and saw that he himself had lost his popularity. The Assembly disapproved of the step he had taken; the King, for whom it, was taken, showed no satisfaction at it, and he saw himself compelled to return to his army as quickly as he could. He thought he could rely on the National Guard; but on the day of his arrival those officers who were in the King's interest inquired of his Majesty whether they were to forward the views of Gendral de La Fayette by joining him in such measures as he should pursue during his stay at Paris. The King enjoined them not to do so. From this answer M. de La Fayette perceived that he was abandoned by the remainder of his party in the Paris guard.

On his arrival a plan was presented to the Queen, in which it was proposed by a junction between La Fayette's army and the King's party to rescue the royal family and convey them to Rouen. I did not learn the particulars of this plan; the Queen only said to me upon the subject that M. de La Fayette was offered to them as a resource; but that it would be better for them to perish than to owe their safety to the man who had done them the most mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity of treating with him.

I passed the whole month of July without going to bed; I was fearful of some attack by night. There was one plot against the Queen's life which has never been made known. I was alone by her bedside at one o'clock in the morning; we heard somebody walking softly down the corridor, which passes along the whole line of her apartments, and which was then locked at each end. I went out to fetch the valet de chambre; he entered the corridor, and the Queen and myself soon heard the noise of two men fighting. The unfortunate Princess held me locked in her arms, and said to me, "What a situation! insults by day and assassins by night!" The valet de chambre cried out to her from the corridor, "Madame, it is a wretch that I know; I have him!"--"Let him go," said the Queen; "open the door to him; he came to murder me; the Jacobins would carry him about in triumph to-morrow." The man was a servant of the King's toilet, who had taken the key of the corridor out of his Majesty's pocket after he was in bed, no doubt with the intention of committing the crime suspected. The valet de chambre, who was a very strong man, held him by the wrists, and thrust him out at the door. The wretch did not speak a word. The valet de chambre said, in answer to the Queen, who spoke to him gratefully of the danger to which he had exposed himself, that he feared nothing, and that he had always a pair of excellent pistols about him for no other purpose than to defend her Majesty. The next day M. de Septeuil had all the locks of the King's inner apartments changed. I did the same by those of the Queen.

We were every moment told that the Faubourg St. Antoine was preparing to march against the palace. At four o'clock one morning towards the latter end of July a person came to give me information to that effect. I instantly sent off two men, on whom I could rely, with orders to proceed to the usual places for assembling, and to come back speedily and give me an account of the state of the city. We knew that at least an hour must elapse before the populace or the faubourgs assembled on the site of the Bastille could reach the Tuileries. It seemed to me sufficient for the Queen's safety that all about her should be awakened. I went softly into her room; she was asleep; I did not awaken her. I found General de W----in the great closet; he told me the meeting was, for this once, dispersing. The General had endeavoured to please the populace by the same means as M. de La Fayette had employed. He saluted the lowest poissarde, and lowered his hat down to his very stirrup. But the populace, who had been flattered for three years, required far different homage to its power, and the poor man was unnoticed. The King had been awakened, and so had Madame Elisabeth, who had gone to him. The Queen, yielding to the weight of her griefs, slept till nine o'clock on that day, which was very unusual with her. The King had already been to know whether she was awake; I told him what I had done, and the care I had taken not to disturb her. He thanked me, and said, "I was awake, and so was the whole palace; she ran no risk. I am very glad to see her take a little rest. Alas! her griefs double mine!" What was my chagrin when, upon awaking and learning what had passed, the Queen burst into tears from regret at not having been called, and began to upbraid me, on whose friendship she ought to have been able to rely, for having served her so ill under such circumstances! In vain did I reiterate that it had been only a false alarm, and that she required to have her strength recruited. "It is not diminished," said she; "misfortune gives us additional strength. Elisabeth was with the King, and I was asleep,--I who am determined to perish by his side! I am his wife; I will not suffer him to incur the smallest risk without my sharing it."

CHAPTER VIII.

During July the correspondence of M. Bertrand de Molleville with the King and Queen was most active. M. de Marsilly, formerly a lieutenant of the Cent-Suisses of the Guard, was the bearer of the letters.

[I received by night only the King's answer, written with his own hand, in the margin of my letter. I always sent him back with the day's letter that to which he had replied the day before, so that my letters and his answers, of which I contented myself with taking notes only, never remained with me twenty-four hours. I proposed this arrangement to his Majesty to remove all uneasiness from his mind; my letters were generally delivered to the King or the Queen by M. de Marsilly, captain of the King's Guard, whose attachment and fidelity were known to their Majesties. I also sometimes employed M. Bernard de Marigny, who had left Brest for the purpose of sharing with his Majesty's faithful servants the dangers which threatened the King.--"Memoirs of Bertrand de Molleville," vol. ii., p. 12.]

He came to me the first time with a note from the Queen directed to M. Bertrand himself. In this note the Queen said: "Address yourself with full confidence to Madame Campan; the conduct of her brother in Russia has not at all influenced her sentiments; she is wholly devoted to us; and if, hereafter, you should have anything to say to us verbally, you may rely entirely upon her devotion and discretion."

The mobs which gathered almost nightly in the faubourgs alarmed the Queen's friends; they entreated her not to sleep in her room on the ground floor of the Tuileries. She removed to the first floor, to a room which was between the King's apartments and those of the Dauphin. Being awake always from daybreak, she ordered that neither the shutters nor the window-blinds should be closed, that her long sleepless nights might be the less weary. About the middle of one of these nights, when the moon was shining into her bedchamber, she gazed at it, and told me that in a month she should not see that moon unless freed from her chains, and beholding the King at liberty. She then imparted to me all that was concurring to deliver them; but said that the opinions of their intimate advisers were alarmingly at variance; that some vouched for complete success, while others pointed out insurmountable dangers. She added that she possessed the itinerary of the march of the Princes and the King of Prussia: that on such a day they would be at Verdun, on another day at such a place, that Lille was about to be besieged, but that M. de J-----, whose prudence and intelligence the King, as well as herself, highly valued, alarmed them much respecting the success of that siege, and made them apprehensive that, even were the commandant devoted to them, the civil authority, which by the constitution gave great power to the mayors of towns, would overrule the military commandant. She was also very uneasy as to what would take place at Paris during the interval, and spoke to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.--"The King," said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes of Louis XV., until the age of twenty-one. This constraint confirmed his timidity.

"Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words addressed to the Parisians, who are devoted to him, would multiply the strength of our party a hundredfold: he will not utter them. What can we expect from those addresses to the people which he has been advised to post up? Nothing but fresh outrages. As for myself, I could do anything, and would appear on horseback if necessary. But if I were really to begin to act, that would be furnishing arms to the King's enemies; the cry against the Austrian, and against the sway of a woman, would become general in France; and, moreover, by showing myself, I should render the King a mere nothing. A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to remain passive and prepare to die."

The garden of the Tuileries was full of maddened men, who insulted all who seemed to side with the Court. "The Life of Marie Antoinette" was cried under the Queen's windows, infamous plates were annexed to the book, the hawkers showed them to the passersby. On all sides were heard the jubilant outcries of a people in a state of delirium almost as frightful as the explosion of their rage. The Queen and her children were unable to breathe the open air any longer. It was determined that the garden of the Tuileries should be closed: as soon as this step was taken the Assembly decreed that the whole length of the Terrace des Feuillans belonged to it, and fixed the boundary between what was called the national ground and the Coblentz ground by a tricoloured ribbon stretched from one end of the terrace to the other. All good citizens were ordered, by notices affixed to it, not to go down into the garden, under pain of being treated in the same manner as Foulon and Berthier. A young man who did not observe this written order went down into the garden; furious outcries, threats of la lanterne, and the crowd of people which collected upon the terrace warned him of his imprudence, and the danger which he ran. He immediately pulled off his shoes, took out his handkerchief, and wiped the dust from their soles. The people cried out, "Bravo! the good citizen for ever!" He was carried off in triumph. The shutting up of the Tuileries did not enable the Queen and her children to walk in the garden. The people on the terrace sent forth dreadful shouts, and she was twice compelled to return to her apartments.

In the early part of August many zealous persons offered the King money; he refused considerable sums, being unwilling to injure the fortunes of individuals. M. de la Ferte, intendant of the 'menus plaisirs', brought me a thousand louis, requesting me to lay them at the feet of the Queen. He thought she could not have too much money at so perilous a time, and that every good Frenchman should hasten to place all his ready money in her hands. She refused this sum, and others of much greater amount which were offered to her.

[M. Auguie, my brother-in-law, receiver-general of the finances, offered her, through his wife, a portfolio containing one hundred thousand crowns in paper money. On this occasion the Queen said the most affecting things to my sister, expressive of her happiness at having contributed to the fortunes of such faithful subjects as herself and her husband, but declined her offer.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

However, a few days afterwards, she told me she would accept M. de la Ferte's twenty-four thousand francs, because they would make up a sum which the King had to expend. She therefore directed, me to go and receive those twenty-four thousand francs, to add them to the one hundred thousand francs she had placed in my hands, and to change the whole into assignats to increase their amount. Her orders were executed, and the assignats were delivered to the King. The Queen informed me that Madame Elisabeth had found a well-meaning man who had engaged to gain over Petion by the bribe of a large sum of money, and that deputy would, by a preconcerted signal, inform the King of the success of the project. His Majesty soon had an opportunity of seeing Petion, and on the Queen asking him before me if he was satisfied with him, the King replied, "Neither more nor less satisfied than usual; he did not make the concerted signal, and I believe I have been cheated." The Queen then condescended to explain the whole of the enigma to me. "Petion," said she, "was, while talking to the King, to have kept his finger fixed upon his right eye for at least two seconds."--"He did not even put his hand up to his chin," said the King; "after all, it is but so much money stolen: the thief will not boast of it, and the affair will remain a secret. Let us talk of something else." He turned to me and said, "Your father was an intimate friend of Mandat, who now commands the National Guard; describe him to me; what ought I to expect from him?" I answered that he was one of his Majesty's most faithful subjects, but that with a great deal of loyalty he possessed very little sense, and that he was involved in the constitutional vortex. "I understand," said the King; "he is a man who would defend my palace and my person, because that is enjoined by the constitution which he has sworn to support, but who would fight against the party in favour of sovereign authority; it is well to know this with certainty."

On the next day the Princesse de Lamballe sent for me very early in the morning. I found her on a sofa facing a window that looked upon the Pont Royal. She then occupied that apartment of the Pavilion of Flora which was on a level with that of the Queen. She desired me to sit down by her. Her Highness had a writing-desk upon her knees. "You have had many enemies," said she; "attempts have been made to deprive you of the Queen's favour; they have been far from successful. Do you know that even I myself, not being so well acquainted with you as the Queen, was rendered suspicious of you; and that upon the arrival of the Court at the Tuileries I gave you a companion to be a spy upon you; and that I had another belonging to the police placed at your door! I was assured that you received five or six of the most virulent deputies of the Tiers Etat; but it was that wardrobe woman whose rooms were above you.

"In short," said the Princess, "persons of integrity have nothing to fear from the evil-disposed when they belong to so upright a prince as the King. As to the Queen, she knows you, and has loved you ever since she came into France. You shall judge of the King's opinion of you: it was yesterday evening decided in the family circle that, at a time when the Tuileries is likely to be attacked, it was necessary to have the most faithful account of the opinions and conduct of all the individuals composing the Queen's service. The King takes the same precaution on his part respecting all who are about him. He said there was with him a person of great integrity, to whom he would commit this inquiry; and that, with regard to the Queen's household, you must be spoken to, that he had long studied your character, and that he esteemed your veracity."

The Princess had a list of the names of all who belonged to the Queen's chamber on her desk. She asked me for information respecting each individual. I was fortunate in having none but the most favourable information to give. I had to speak of my avowed enemy in the Queen's chamber; of her who most wished that I should be responsible for my brother's political opinions. The Princess, as the head of the chamber, could not be ignorant of this circumstance; but as the person in question, who idolised the King and Queen, would not have hesitated to sacrifice her life in order to save theirs, and as possibly her attachment to them, united to considerable narrowness of intellect and a limited education, contributed to her jealousy of me, I spoke of her in the highest terms.

The Princess wrote as I dictated, and occasionally looked at me with astonishment. When I had done I entreated her to write in the margin that the lady alluded to was my declared enemy. She embraced me, saying, "Ah! do not write it! we should not record an unhappy circumstance which ought to be forgotten." We came to a man of genius who was much attached to the Queen, and I described him as a man born solely to contradict, showing himself an aristocrat with democrats, and a democrat among aristocrats; but still a man of probity, and well disposed to his sovereign. The Princess said she knew many persons of that disposition, and that she was delighted I had nothing to say against this man, because she herself had placed him about the Queen.

The whole of her Majesty's chamber, which consisted entirely of persons of fidelity, gave throughout all the dreadful convulsions of the Revolution proofs of the greatest prudence and self-devotion. The same cannot be said of the antechambers. With the exception of three or four, all the servants of that class were outrageous Jacobins; and I saw on those occasions the necessity of composing the private household of princes of persons completely separated from the class of the people.

The situation of the royal family was so unbearable during the months which immediately preceded the 10th of August that the Queen longed for the crisis, whatever might be its issue. She frequently said that a long confinement in a tower by the seaside would seem to her less intolerable than those feuds in which the weakness of her party daily threatened an inevitable catastrophe.

[A few days before the 10th of August the squabbles between the royalists and the Jacobins, and between the Jacobins and the constitutionalists, increased in warmth; among the latter those men who defended the principles they professed with the greatest talent, courage, and constancy were at the same time the most exposed to danger. Montjoie says: "The question of dethronement was discussed with a degree of frenzy in the Assembly. Such of the deputies as voted against it were abused, ill treated, and surrounded by assassins. They had a battle to fight at every step they took; and at length they did not dare to sleep in their own houses. Of this number were Regnault de Beaucaron, Froudiere, Girardin, and Vaublanc. Girardin complained of having been struck in one of the lobbies of the Assembly. A voice cried out to him, 'Say where were you struck.' 'Where?' replied Girardin, 'what a question! Behind. Do assassins ever strike otherwise?"]

Not only were their Majesties prevented from breathing the open air, but they were also insulted at the very foot of the altar. The Sunday before the last day of the monarchy, while the royal family went through the gallery to the chapel, half the soldiers of the National Guard exclaimed, "Long live the King!" and the other half, "No; no King! Down with the veto!" and on that day at vespers the choristers preconcerted to use loud and threatening emphasis when chanting the words, "Deposuit potentes de sede," in the "Magnificat." Incensed at such an irreverent proceeding, the royalists in their turn thrice exclaimed, "Et reginam," after the "Domine salvum fac regem." The tumult during the whole time of divine service was excessive.

At length the terrible night of the 10th of August, 1792, arrived. On the preceding evening Potion went to the Assembly and informed it that preparations were making for an insurrection on the following day; that the tocsin would sound at midnight; and that he feared he had not sufficient means for resisting the attack which was about to take place. Upon this information the Assembly passed to the order of the day. Petion, however, gave an order for repelling force by force.

[Petion was the Mayor of Paris, and Mandat on this day was commandant of the National Guard. Mandat was assassinated that night.--"Thiers," vol. i., p. 260.]

M. Mandat was armed with this order; and, finding his fidelity to the King's person supported by what he considered the law of the State, he conducted himself in all his operations with the greatest energy. On the evening of the 9th I was present at the King's supper. While his Majesty was giving me various orders we heard a great noise at the door of the apartment. I went to see what was the cause of it, and found the two sentinels fighting. One said, speaking of the King, that he was hearty in the cause of the constitution, and would defend it at the peril of his life; the other maintained that he was an encumbrance to the only constitution suitable to a free people. They were almost ready to cut one another's throats. I returned with a countenance which betrayed my emotion. The King desired to know what was going forward at his door; I could not conceal it from him. The Queen said she was not at all surprised at it, and that more than half the guard belonged to the Jacobin party.

The tocsin sounded at midnight. The Swiss were drawn up like walls; and in the midst of their soldierlike silence, which formed a striking contrast with the perpetual din of the town guard, the King informed M. de J-----, an officer of the staff, of the plan of defence laid down by General Viomenil. M. de J----- said to me, after this private conference, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets; our dangers are unavoidable; the means of defence are nil; safety might be obtained by some degree of energy in the King, but that is the only virtue in which he is deficient."

An hour after midnight the Queen and Madame Elisabeth said they would lie down on a sofa in a room in the entresols, the windows of which commanded the courtyard of the Tuileries.

The Queen told me the King had just refused to put on his quilted under-waistcoat; that he had consented to wear it on the 14th of July because he was merely going to a ceremony where the blade of an assassin was to be apprehended, but that on a day on which his party might fight against the revolutionists he thought there was something cowardly in preserving his life by such means.

During this time Madame Elisabeth disengaged herself from some of her clothing which encumbered her in order to lie down on the sofa: she took a cornelian pin out of her cape, and before she laid it down on the table she showed it to me, and desired me to read a motto engraved upon it round a stalk of lilies. The words were, "Oblivion of injuries; pardon for offences."--"I much fear," added that virtuous Princess, "this maxim has but little influence among our enemies; but it ought not to be less dear to us on that account."

[The exalted piety of Madame Elisabeth gave to all she said and did a noble character, descriptive of that of her soul. On the day on which this worthy descendant of Saint Louis was sacrificed, the executioner, in tying her hands behind her, raised up one of the ends of her handkerchief. Madame Elisabeth, with calmness, and in a voice which seemed not to belong to earth, said to him, "In the name of modesty, cover my bosom." I learned this from Madame de Serilly, who was condemned the same day as the Princess, but who obtained a respite at the moment of the execution, Madame de Montmorin, her relation, declaring that her cousin was enceinte.-MADAME CAMPAN.]

The Queen desired me to sit down by her; the two Princesses could not sleep; they were conversing mournfully upon their situation when a musket was discharged in the courtyard. They both quitted the sofa, saying, "There is the first shot, unfortunately it will not be the last; let us go up to the King." The Queen desired me to follow her; several of her women went with me.

At four o'clock the Queen came out of the King's chamber and told us she had no longer any hope; that M. Mandat, who had gone to the Hotel de Ville to receive further orders, had just been assassinated, and that the people were at that time carrying his head about the streets. Day came. The King, the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, Madame, and the Dauphin went down to pass through the ranks of the sections of the National Guard; the cry of "Vive le Roi!" was heard from a few places. I was at a window on the garden side; I saw some of the gunners quit their posts, go up to the King, and thrust their fists in his face, insulting him by the most brutal language. Messieurs de Salvert and de Bridges drove them off in a spirited manner. The King was as pale as a corpse. The royal family came in again. The Queen told me that all was lost; that the King had shown no energy; and that this sort of review had done more harm than good.

I was in the billiard-room with my companions; we placed ourselves upon some high benches. I then saw M. d'Hervilly with a drawn sword in his hand, ordering the usher to open the door to the French noblesse. Two hundred persons entered the room nearest to that in which the family were; others drew up in two lines in the preceding rooms. I saw a few people belonging to the Court, many others whose features were unknown to me, and a few who figured technically without right among what was called the noblesse, but whose self-devotion ennobled them at once. They were all so badly armed that even in that situation the indomitable French liveliness indulged in jests. M. de Saint-Souplet, one of the King's equerries, and a page, carried on their shoulders instead of muskets the tongs belonging to the King's antechamber, which they had broken and divided between them. Another page, who had a pocket-pistol in his hand, stuck the end of it against the back of the person who stood before him, and who begged he would be good enough to rest it elsewhere. A sword and a pair of pistols were the only arms of those who had had the precaution to provide themselves with arms at all. Meanwhile, the numerous bands from the faubourgs, armed with pikes and cutlasses, filled the Carrousel and the streets adjacent to the Tuileries. The sanguinary Marseillais were at their head, with cannon pointed against the Chateau. In this emergency the King's Council sent M. Dejoly, the Minister of Justice, to the Assembly to request they would send the King a deputation which might serve as a safeguard to the executive power. His ruin was resolved on; they passed to the order of the day. At eight o'clock the department repaired to the Chateau. The procureur-syndic, seeing that the guard within was ready to join the assailants, went into the King's closet and requested to speak to him in private. The King received him in his chamber; the Queen was with him. There M. Roederer told him that the King, all his family, and the people about them would inevitably perish unless his Majesty immediately determined to go to the National Assembly. The Queen at first opposed this advice, but the procureur-syndic told her that she rendered herself responsible for the deaths of the King, her children, and all who were in the palace. She no longer objected. The King then consented to go to the Assembly. As he set out, he said to the minister and persons who surrounded him, "Come, gentlemen, there is nothing more to be done here."

["The King hesitated, the Queen manifested the highest dissatisfaction. 'What!' said she,' are we alone; is there nobody who can act?'--'Yes, Madame, alone; action is useless--resistance is impossible.' One of the members of the department, M. Gerdrot, insisted on the prompt execution of the proposed measure. 'Silence, monsieur,' said the Queen to him; 'silence; you are the only person who ought to be silent here; when the mischief is done, those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it.' . . .

"The King remained mute; nobody spoke. It was reserved for me to give the last piece of advice. I had the firmness to say, 'Let us go, and not deliberate; honour commands it, the good of the State requires it. Let us go to the National Assembly; this step ought to have been taken long ago: 'Let us go,' said the King, raising his right hand; 'let us start; let us give this last mark of self-devotion, since it is necessary.' The Queen was persuaded. Her first anxiety was for the King, the second for her son; the King had none. 'M. Roederer--gentlemen,' said the Queen, 'you answer for the person of the King; you answer for that of my son.'--'Madame,' replied M. Roederer, 'we pledge ourselves to die at your side; that is all we can engage for.'"--MONTJOIE, "History of Marie Antoinette."]

The Queen said to me as she left the King's chamber, "Wait in my apartments; I will come to you, or I will send for you to go I know not whither." She took with her only the Princesse de Lamballe and Madame de Tourzel. The Princesse de Tarente and Madame de la Roche-Aymon were inconsolable at being left at the Tuileries; they, and all who belonged to the chamber, went down into the Queen's apartments.

We saw the royal family pass between two lines formed by the Swiss grenadiers and those of the battalions of the Petits-Peres and the Filles Saint Thomas. They were so pressed upon by the crowd that during that short passage the Queen was robbed of her watch and purse. A man of great height and horrible appearance, one of such as were to be seen at the head of all the insurrections, drew near the Dauphin, whom the Queen was leading by the hand, and took him up in his arms. The Queen uttered a scream of terror, and was ready to faint. The man said to her, "Don't be frightened, I will do him no harm;" and he gave him back to her at the entrance of the chamber.

I leave to history all the details of that too memorable day, confining myself to recalling a few of the frightful scenes acted in the interior of the Tuileries after the King had quitted the palace.

The assailants did not know that the King and his family had betaken themselves to the Assembly; and those who defended the palace from the aide of the courts were equally ignorant of it. It is supposed that if they had been aware of the fact the siege would never have taken place.

[In reading of the events of the 10th of August, 1792, the reader must remember that there was hardly any armed force to resist the mob. The regiments that had shown signs of being loyal to the King had been removed from Paris by the Assembly. The Swiss had been deprived of their own artillery, and the Court had sent one of their battalions into Normandy at a time when there was an idea of taking refuge there. The National Guard were either disloyal or disheartened, and the gunners, especially of that force at the Tuileries, sympathised with the mob. Thus the King had about 800 or 900 Swiss and little more than one battalion of the National Guard. Mandat, one of the six heads of the legions of the National Guard, to whose turn the command fell on that day, was true to his duty, but was sent for to the Hotel de Ville and assassinated. Still the small force, even after the departure of the King, would have probably beaten off the mob had not the King given the fatal order to the Swiss to cease firing. (See Thiers's "Revolution Francaise," vol. i., chap. xi.) Bonaparte's opinion of the mob may be judged by his remarks on the 20th June, 1792, when, disgusted at seeing the King appear with the red cap on his head, he exclaimed, "Che coglione! Why have they let in all that rabble? Why don't they sweep off 400 or 500 of them with the cannon? The rest would then set off." ("Bourrienne," vol. i., p.13, Bentley, London, 1836.) Bonaparte carried out his own plan against a far stronger force of assailants on the Jour des Sections, 4th October, 1795.]

The Marseillais began by driving from their posts several Swiss, who yielded without resistance; a few of the assailants fired upon them; some of the Swiss officers, seeing their men fall, and perhaps thinking the King was still at the Tuileries, gave the word to a whole battalion to fire. The aggressors were thrown into disorder, and the Carrousel was cleared in a moment; but they soon returned, spurred on by rage and revenge. The Swiss were but eight hundred strong; they fell back into the interior of the Chateau; some of the doors were battered in by the guns, others broken through with hatchets; the populace rushed from all quarters into the interior of the palace; almost all the Swiss were massacred; the nobles, flying through the gallery which leads to the Louvre, were either stabbed or shot, and the bodies thrown out of the windows.

M. Pallas and M. de Marchais, ushers of the King's chamber, were killed in defending the door of the council chamber; many others of the King's servants fell victims to their fidelity. I mention these two persons in particular because, with their hats pulled over their brows and their swords in their hands, they exclaimed, as they defended themselves with unavailing courage, "We will not survive!--this is our post; our duty is to die at it." M. Diet behaved in the same manner at the door of the Queen's bedchamber; he experienced the same fate. The Princesse de Tarente had fortunately opened the door of the apartments; otherwise, the dreadful band seeing several women collected in the Queen's salon would have fancied she was among us, and would have immediately massacred us had we resisted them. We were, indeed, all about to perish, when a man with a long beard came up, exclaiming, in the name of Potion, "Spare the women; don't dishonour the nation!" A particular circumstance placed me in greater danger than the others. In my confusion I imagined, a moment before the assailants entered the Queen's apartments, that my sister was not among the group of women collected there; and I went up into an 'entresol', where I supposed she had taken refuge, to induce her to come down, fancying it safer that we should not be separated. I did not find her in the room in question; I saw there only our two femmes de chambre and one of the Queen's two heyducs, a man of great height and military aspect. I saw that he was pale, and sitting on a bed. I cried out to him, "Fly! the footmen and our people are already safe."--"I cannot," said the man to me; "I am dying of fear." As he spoke I heard a number of men rushing hastily up the staircase; they threw themselves upon him, and I saw him assassinated.

I ran towards the staircase, followed by our women. The murderers left the heyduc to come to me. The women threw themselves at their feet, and held their sabres. The narrowness of the staircase impeded the assassins; but I had already felt a horrid hand thrust into my back to seize me by my clothes, when some one called out from the bottom of the staircase, "What are you doing above there? We don't kill women." I was on my knees; my executioner quitted his hold of me, and said, "Get up, you jade; the nation pardons you."

The brutality of these words did not prevent my suddenly experiencing an indescribable feeling which partook almost equally of the love of life and the idea that I was going to see my son, and all that was dear to me, again. A moment before I had thought less of death than of the pain which the steel, suspended over my head, would occasion me. Death is seldom seen so close without striking his blow. I heard every syllable uttered by the assassins, just as if I had been calm.

Five or six men seized me and my companions, and, having made us get up on benches placed before the windows, ordered us to call out, "The nation for ever!"

I passed over several corpses; I recognised that of the old Vicomte de Broves, to whom the Queen had sent me at the beginning of the night to desire him and another old man in her name to go home. These brave men desired I would tell her Majesty that they had but too strictly obeyed the King's orders in all circumstances under which they ought to have exposed their own lives in order to preserve his; and that for this once they would not obey, though they would cherish the recollection of the Queen's goodness.

Near the grille, on the side next the bridge, the men who conducted me asked whither I wished to go. Upon my inquiring, in my turn, whether they were at liberty to take me wherever I might wish to go, one of them, a Marseillais, asked me, giving me at the same time a push with the butt end of his musket, whether I still doubted the power of the people? I answered "No," and I mentioned the number of my brother-in-law's house. I saw my sister ascending the steps of the parapet of the bridge, surrounded by members of the National Guard. I called to her, and she turned round. "Would you have her go with you?" said my guardian to me. I told him I did wish it. They called the people who were leading my sister to prison; she joined me.

Madame de la Roche-Aymon and her daughter, Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel, Madame de Ginestoux, lady to the Princesse de Lamballe, the other women of the Queen, and the old Comte d'Affry, were led off together to the Abbaye.

Our progress from the Tuileries to my sister's house was most distressing. We saw several Swiss pursued and killed, and musket-shots were crossing each other in all directions. We passed under the walls of the Louvre; they were firing from the parapet into the windows of the gallery, to hit the knights of the dagger; for thus did the populace designate those faithful subjects who had assembled at the Tuileries to defend the King.

The brigands broke some vessels of water in the Queen's first antechamber; the mixture of blood and water stained the skirts of our white gowns. The poissardes screamed after us in the streets that we were attached to the Austrian. Our protectors then showed some consideration for us, and made us go up a gateway to pull off our gowns; but our petticoats being too short, and making us look like persons in disguise, other poissardes began to bawl out that we were young Swiss dressed up like women. We then saw a tribe of female cannibals enter the street, carrying the head of poor Mandat. Our guards made us hastily enter a little public-house, called for wine, and desired us to drink with them. They assured the landlady that we were their sisters, and good patriots. Happily the Marseillais had quitted us to return to the Tuileries. One of the men who remained with us said to me in a low voice: "I am a gauze-worker in the faubourg. I was forced to march; I am not for all this; I have not killed anybody, and have rescued you. You ran a great risk when we met the mad women who are carrying Mandat's head. These horrible women said yesterday at midnight, upon the site of the Bastille, that they must have their revenge for the 6th of October, at Versailles, and that they had sworn to kill the Queen and all the women attached to her; the danger of the action saved you all."

As I crossed the Carrousel, I saw my house in flames; but as soon as the first moment of affright was over, I thought no more of my personal misfortunes. My ideas turned solely upon the dreadful situation of the Queen.

On reaching my sister's we found all our family in despair, believing they should never see us again. I could not remain in her house; some of the mob, collected round the door, exclaimed that Marie Antoinette's confidante was in the house, and that they must have her head. I disguised myself, and was concealed in the house of M. Morel, secretary for the lotteries. On the morrow I was inquired for there, in the name of the Queen. A deputy, whose sentiments were known to her, took upon himself to find me out.

I borrowed clothes, and went with my sister to the Feuillans--[A former monastery near the Tuileries, so called from the Bernardines, one of the Cistercian orders; later a revolutionary club.]--We got there at the same time with M. Thierry de Ville d'Avray, the King's first valet de chambre. We were taken into an office, where we wrote down our names and places of abode, and we received tickets for admission into the rooms belonging to Camus, the keeper of the Archives, where the King was with his family.

As we entered the first room, a person who was there said to me, "Ah! you are a brave woman; but where is that Thierry,

[M. Thierry, who never ceased to give his sovereign proofs of unalterable attachment, was one of the victims of the 2d of September.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

that man loaded with his master's bounties?"--"He is here," said I; "he is following me. I perceive that even scenes of death do not banish jealousy from among you."

Having belonged to the Court from my earliest youth, I was known to many persons whom I did not know. As I traversed a corridor above the cloisters which led to the cells inhabited by the unfortunate Louis XVI. and his family, several of the grenadiers called me by name. One of them said to me, "Well, the poor King is lost! The Comte d'Artois would have managed it better."--"Not at all," said another.

The royal family occupied a small suite of apartments consisting of four cells, formerly belonging to the ancient monastery of the Feuillans. In the first were the men who had accompanied the King: the Prince de Poix, the Baron d'Aubier, M. de Saint-Pardou, equerry to Madame Elisabeth, MM. de Goguelat, de Chamilly, and de Hue. In the second we found the King; he was having his hair dressed; he took two locks of it, and gave one to my sister and one to me. We offered to kiss his hand; he opposed it, and embraced us without saying anything. In the third was the Queen, in bed, and in indescribable affliction. We found her accompanied only by a stout woman, who appeared tolerably civil; she was the keeper of the apartments. She waited upon the Queen, who as yet had none of her own people about her. Her Majesty stretched out her arms to us, saying, "Come, unfortunate women; come, and see one still more unhappy than yourselves, since she has been the cause of all your misfortunes. We are ruined," continued she; "we have arrived at that point to which they have been leading us for three years, through all possible outrages; we shall fall in this dreadful revolution, and many others will perish after us. All have contributed to our downfall; the reformers have urged it like mad people, and others through ambition, for the wildest Jacobin seeks wealth and office, and the mob is eager for plunder. There is not one real patriot among all this infamous horde. The emigrant party have their intrigues and schemes; foreigners seek to profit by the dissensions of France; every one has a share in our misfortunes."

The Dauphin came in with Madame and the Marquise de Tourzel. On seeing them the Queen said to me, "Poor children! how heartrending it is, instead of handing down to them so fine an inheritance, to say it ends with us!" She afterwards conversed with me about the Tuileries and the persons who had fallen; she condescended also to mention the burning of my house. I looked upon that loss as a mischance which ought not to dwell upon her mind, and I told her so. She spoke of the Princesse de Tarente, whom she greatly loved and valued, of Madame de la Roche-Aymon and her daughter, of the other persons whom she had left at the palace, and of the Duchesse de Luynes, who was to have passed the night at the Tuileries. Respecting her she said, "Hers was one of the first heads turned by the rage for that mischievous philosophy; but her heart brought her back, and I again found a friend in her."

[During the Reign of Terror I withdrew to the Chateau de Coubertin, near that of Dampierre. The Duchesse de Luynes frequently came to ask me to tell her what the Queen had said about her at the Feuillans. She would say as she went away, "I have often need to request you to repeat those words of the Queen."--MADAME CAMPAN.]

I asked the Queen what the ambassadors from foreign powers had done under existing circumstances. She told me that they could do nothing; and that the wife of the English ambassador had just given her a proof of the personal interest she took in her welfare by sending her linen for her son.

I informed her that, in the pillaging of my house, all my accounts with her had been thrown into the Carrousel, and that every sheet of my month's expenditure was signed by her, sometimes leaving four or five inches of blank paper above her signature, a circumstance which rendered me very uneasy, from an apprehension that an improper use might be made of those signatures. She desired me to demand admission to the committee of general safety, and to make this declaration there. I repaired thither instantly and found a deputy, with whose name I have never become acquainted. After hearing me he said that he would not receive my deposition; that Marie Antoinette was now nothing more than any other Frenchwoman; and that if any of those detached papers bearing her signature should be misapplied, she would have, at a future period, a right to lodge a complaint, and to support her declaration by the facts which I had just related. The Queen then regretted having sent me, and feared that she had, by her very caution, pointed out a method of fabricating forgeries which might be dangerous to her; then again she exclaimed, "My apprehensions are as absurd as the step I made you take. They need nothing more for our ruin; all has been told."

She gave us details of what had taken place subsequently to the King's arrival at the Assembly. They are all well known, and I have no occasion to record them; I will merely mention that she told us, though with much delicacy, that she was not a little hurt at the King's conduct since he had quitted the Tuileries; that his habit of laying no restraint upon his great appetite had prompted him to eat as if he had been at his palace; that those who did not know him as she did, did not feel the piety and the magnanimity of his resignation, all which produced so bad an effect that deputies who were devoted to him had warned him of it; but no change could be effected.

I still see in imagination, and shall always see, that narrow cell at the Feuillans, hung with green paper, that wretched couch whence the dethroned, Queen stretched out her arms to us, saying that our misfortunes, of which she was the cause, increased her own. There, for the last time, I saw the tears, I heard the sobs of her whom high birth, natural endowments, and, above all, goodness of heart, had seemed to destine to adorn any throne, and be the happiness of any people! It is impossible for those who lived with Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette not to be fully convinced, while doing full justice to the King's virtues, that if the Queen had been from the moment of her arrival in France the object of the care and affection of a prince of decision and authority, she would have only added to the glory of his reign.

What affecting things I have heard the Queen say in the affliction caused her by the belief of part of the Court and the whole of the people that she did not love France! How did that opinion shock those who knew her heart and her sentiments! Twice did I see her on the point of going from her apartments in the Tuileries into the gardens, to address the immense throng constantly assembled there to insult her. "Yes," exclaimed she, as she paced her chamber with hurried steps, "I will say to them Frenchmen, they have had the cruelty to persuade you that I do not love France!--I! the mother of a Dauphin who will reign over this noble country!--I! whom Providence has seated upon the most powerful throne of Europe! Of all the daughters of Maria Theresa am I not that one whom fortune has most highly favoured? And ought I not to feel all these advantages? What should I find at Vienna? Nothing but sepulchres! What should I lose in France? Everything which can confer glory!"

I protest I only repeat her own words; the soundness of her judgment soon pointed out to her the dangers of such a proceeding. "I should descend from the throne," said she, "merely, perhaps, to excite a momentary sympathy, which the factious would soon render more injurious than beneficial to me."

Yes, not only did Marie Antoinette love France, but few women took greater pride in the courage of Frenchmen. I could adduce a multitude of proofs of this; I will relate two traits which demonstrate the noblest enthusiasm: The Queen was telling me that, at the coronation of the Emperor Francis II., that Prince, bespeaking the admiration of a French general officer, who was then an emigrant, for the fine appearance of his troops, said to him, "There are the men to beat your sans culottes!" "That remains to be seen, Sire," instantly replied the officer. The Queen added, "I don't know the name of that brave Frenchman, but I will learn it; the King ought to be in possession of it." As she was reading the public papers a few days before the 10th of August, she observed that mention was made of the courage of a young man who died in defending the flag he carried, and shouting, "Vive la Nation!"--"Ah! the fine lad!" said the Queen; "what a happiness it would have been for us if such men had never left off crying, 'Vive de Roi!'"

In all that I have hitherto said of this most unfortunate of women and of queens, those who did not live with her, those who knew her but partially, and especially the majority of foreigners, prejudiced by infamous libels, may imagine I have thought it my duty to sacrifice truth on the altar of gratitude. Fortunately I can invoke unexceptionable witnesses; they will declare whether what I assert that I have seen and heard appears to them either untrue or improbable.

CHAPTER IX.

The Queen having been robbed of her purse as she was passing from the Tuileries to the Feuillans, requested my sister to lend her twenty-five louis.

[On being interrogated the Queen declared that these five and twenty louis had been lent to her by my sister; this formed a pretence for arresting her and me, and led to her death.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

I spent part of the day at the Feuillans, and her Majesty told me she would ask Potion to let me be with her in the place which the Assembly should decree for her prison. I then returned home to prepare everything that might be necessary for me to accompany her.

On the same day (11th August), at nine in the evening, I returned to the Feuillans. I found there were orders at all the gates forbidding my being admitted. I claimed a right to enter by virtue of the first permission which had been given to me; I was again refused. I was told that the Queen had as many people as were requisite about her. My sister was with her, as well as one of my companions, who came out of the prisons of the Abbaye on the 11th. I renewed my solicitations on the 12th; my tears and entreaties moved neither the keepers of the gates, nor even a deputy, to whom I addressed myself.

I soon heard of the removal of Louis XVI. and his family to the Temple. I went to Potion accompanied by M. Valadon, for whom I had procured a place in the post-office, and who was devoted to me. He determined to go up to Potion alone; he told him that those who requested to be confined could not be suspected of evil designs, and that no political opinion could afford a ground of objection to these solicitations. Seeing that the well-meaning man did not succeed, I thought to do more in person; but Petion persisted in his refusal, and threatened to send me to La Force. Thinking to give me a kind of consolation, he added I might be certain that all those who were then with Louis XVI. and his family would not stay with them long. And in fact, two or three days afterwards the Princesse de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel, her daughter, the Queen's first woman, the first woman of the Dauphin and of Madame, M. de Chamilly, and M. de Hue were carried off during the night and transferred to La Force. After the departure of the King and Queen for the Temple, my sister was detained a prisoner in the apartments their Majesties had quitted for twenty-four hours.

From this time I was reduced to the misery of having no further intelligence of my august and unfortunate mistress but through the medium of the newspapers or the National Guard, who did duty at the Temple.

The King and Queen said nothing to me at the Feuillans about the portfolio which had been deposited with me; no doubt they expected to see me again. The minister Roland and the deputies composing the provisional government were very intent on a search for papers belonging to their Majesties. They had the whole of the Tuileries ransacked. The infamous Robespierre bethought himself of M. Campan, the Queen's private secretary, and said that his death was feigned; that he was living unknown in some obscure part of France, and was doubtless the depositary of all the important papers. In a great portfolio belonging to the King there had been found a solitary letter from the Comte d'Artois, which, by its date, and the subjects of which it treated, indicated the existence of a continued correspondence. (This letter appeared among the documents used on the trial of Louis XVI.) A former preceptor of my son's had studied with Robespierre; the latter, meeting him in the street, and knowing the connection which had subsisted between him and the family of M. Campan, required him to say, upon his honour, whether he was certain of the death of the latter. The man replied that M. Campan had died at La Briche in 1791, and that he had seen him interred in the cemetery of Epinay. "well, then," resumed Robespierre, "bring me the certificate of his burial at twelve to-morrow; it is a document for which I have pressing occasion." Upon hearing the deputy's demand I instantly sent for a certificate of M. Campan's burial, and Robespierre received it at nine o'clock the next morning. But I considered that, in thinking of my father-in-law, they were coming very near me, the real depositary of these important papers. I passed days and nights in considering what I could do for the best under such circumstances.

I was thus situated when the order to inform against those who had been denounced as suspected on the 10th of August led to domiciliary visits. My servants were told that the people of the quarter in which I lived were talking much of the search that would be made in my house, and came to apprise me of it. I heard that fifty armed men would make themselves masters of M. Auguies house, where I then was. I had just received this intelligence when M. Gougenot, the King's maitre d'hotel and receiver-general of the taxes, a man much attached to his sovereign, came into my room wrapped in a ridingcloak, under which, with great difficulty, he carried the King's portfolio, which I had entrusted to him. He threw it down at my feet, and said to me, "There is your deposit; I did not receive it from our unfortunate King's own hands; in delivering it to you I have executed my trust." After saying this he was about to withdraw. I stopped him, praying him to consult with me what I ought to do in such a trying emergency. He would not listen to my entreaties, or even hear me describe the course I intended to pursue. I told him my abode was about to be surrounded; I imparted to him what the Queen had said to me about the contents of the portfolio. To all this he answered, "There it is; decide for yourself; I will have no hand in it." Upon that I remained a few seconds thinking, and my conduct was founded upon the following reasons. I spoke aloud, although to myself; I walked about the room with agitated steps; M. Gougenot was thunderstruck. "Yes," said I, "when we can no longer communicate with our King and receive his orders, however attached we may be to him, we can only serve him according to the best of our own judgment. The Queen said to me, 'This portfolio contains scarcely anything but documents of a most dangerous description in the event of a trial taking place, if it should fall into the hands of revolutionary persons.' She mentioned, too, a single document which would, under the same circumstances, be useful. It is my duty to interpret her words, and consider them as orders. She meant to say, 'You will save such a paper, you will destroy the rest if they are likely to be taken from you.' If it were not so, was there any occasion for her to enter into any detail as to what the portfolio contained? The order to keep it was sufficient. Probably it contains, moreover, the letters of that part of the family which has emigrated; there is nothing which may have been foreseen or decided upon that can be useful now; and there can be no political thread which has not been cut by the events of the 10th of August and the imprisonment of the King. My house is about to be surrounded; I cannot conceal anything of such bulk; I might, then, through want of foresight, give up that which would cause the condemnation of the King. Let us open the portfolio, save the document alluded to, and destroy the rest." I took a knife and cut open one side of the portfolio. I saw a great number of envelopes endorsed by the King's own hand. M. Gougenot found there the former seals of the King,

[No doubt it was in order to have the ancient seals ready at a moment's notice, in case of a counter-revolution, that the Queen desired me not to quit the Tuileries. M. Gougenot threw the seals into the river, one from above the Pont Neuf, and the other from near the Pont Royal.--MADAME CAMPAN.]

such as they were before the Assembly had changed the inscription. At this moment we heard a great noise; he agreed to tie up the portfolio, take it again under his cloak, and go to a safe place to execute what I had taken upon me to determine. He made me swear, by all I held most sacred, that I would affirm, under every possible emergency, that the course I was pursuing had not been dictated to me by anybody; and that, whatever might be the result, I would take all the credit or all the blame upon myself. I lifted up my hand and took the oath he required; he went out. Half an hour afterwards a great number of armed men came to my house; they placed sentinels at all the outlets; they broke open secretaires and closets of which they had not the keys; they 'searched the flower-pots and boxes; they examined the cellars; and the commandant repeatedly said, "Look particularly for papers." In the afternoon M. Gougenot returned. He had still the seals of France about him, and he brought me a statement of all that he had burnt.

The portfolio contained twenty letters from Monsieur, eighteen or nineteen from the Comte d'Artois, seventeen from Madame Adelaide, eighteen from Madame Victoire, a great many letters from Comte Alexandre de Lameth, and many from M. de Malesherbes, with documents annexed to them. There were also some from M. de Montmorin and other ex-ministers or ambassadors. Each correspondence had its title written in the King's own hand upon the blank paper which contained it. The most voluminous was that from Mirabeau. It was tied up with a scheme for an escape, which he thought necessary. M. Gougenot, who had skimmed over these letters with more attention than the rest, told me they were of so interesting a nature that the King had no doubt kept them as documents exceedingly valuable for a history of his reign, and that the correspondence with the Princes, which was entirely relative to what was going forward abroad, in concert with the King, would have been fatal to him if it had been seized. After he had finished he placed in my hands the proces-verbal, signed by all the ministers, to which the King attached so much importance, because he had given his opinion against the declaration of war; a copy of the letter written by the King to the Princes, his brothers, inviting them to return to France; an account of the diamonds which the Queen had sent to Brussels (these two documents were in my handwriting); and a receipt for four hundred thousand francs, under the hand of a celebrated banker. This sum was part of the eight hundred thousand francs which the Queen had gradually saved during her reign, out of her pension of three hundred thousand francs per annum, and out of the one hundred thousand francs given by way of present on the birth of the Dauphin.

This receipt, written on a very small piece of paper, was in the cover of an almanac. I agreed with M. Gougenot, who was obliged by his office to reside in Paris, that he should retain the proces-verbal of the Council and the receipt for the four hundred thousand francs, and that we should wait either for orders or for the means of transmitting these documents to the King or Queen; and I set out for Versailles.

The strictness of the precautions taken to guard the illustrious prisoners was daily increased. The idea that I could not inform the King of the course I had adopted of burning his papers, and the fear that I should not be able to transmit to him that which he had pointed out as necessary, tormented me to such a degree that it is wonderful my health endured the strain.

The dreadful trial drew near. Official advocates were granted to the King; the heroic virtue of M. de Malesherbes induced him to brave the most imminent dangers, either to save his master or to perish with him. I hoped also to be able to find some means of informing his Majesty of what I had thought it right to do. I sent a man, on whom I could rely, to Paris, to request M. Gougenot to come to me at Versailles he came immediately. We agreed that he should see M. de Malesherbes without availing himself of any intermediate person for that purpose.

M. Gougenot awaited his return from the Temple at the door of his hotel, and made a sign that he wished to speak to him. A moment afterwards a servant came to introduce him into the magistrates' room. He imparted to M. de Malesherbes what I had thought it right to do with respect to the King's papers, and placed in his hands the proces-verbal of the Council, which his Majesty had preserved in order to serve, if occasion required it, for a ground of his defence. However, that paper is not mentioned in either of the speeches of his advocate; probably it was determined not to make use of it.

I stop at that terrible period which is marked by the assassination of a King whose virtues are well known; but I cannot refrain from relating what he deigned to say in my favour to M. de Malesherbes:

"Let Madame Campan know that she did what I should myself have ordered her to do; I thank her for it; she is one of those whom I regret I have it not in my power to recompense for their fidelity to my person, and for their good services." I did not hear of this until the morning after he had suffered, and I think I should have sunk under my despair if this honourable testimony had not given me some consolation.

SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER IX.

MADAME CAMPAN'S narrative breaking off abruptly at the time of the painful end met with by her sister, we have supplemented it by abridged accounts of the chief incidents in the tragedy which overwhelmed the royal house she so faithfully served, taken from contemporary records and the best historical authorities.

The Royal Family in the Temple.

The Assembly having, at the instance of the Commune of Paris, decreed that the royal family should be immured in the Temple, they were removed thither from the Feuillans on the 13th of August, 1792, in the charge of Potion, Mayor of Paris, and Santerre, the commandant-general. Twelve Commissioners of the general council were to keep constant watch at the Temple, which had been fortified by earthworks and garrisoned by detachments of the National Guard, no person being allowed to enter without permission from the municipality.

The Temple, formerly the headquarters of the Knights Templars in Paris, consisted of two buildings,--the Palace, facing the Rue de Temple, usually occupied by one of the Princes of the blood; and the Tower, standing behind the Palace.

[Clery gives a more minute description of this singular building: "The small tower of the Temple in which the King was then confined stood with its back against the great tower, without any interior communication, and formed a long square, flanked by two turrets. In one of these turrets there was a narrow staircase that led from the first floor to a gallery on the platform; in the other were small rooms, answering to each story of the tower. The body of the building was four stories high. The first consisted of an antechamber, a dining-room, and a small room in the turret, where there was a library containing from twelve to fifteen hundred volumes. The second story was divided nearly in the same manner. The largest room was the Queen's bedchamber, in which the Dauphin also slept; the second, which was separated from the Queen's by a small antechamber almost without light, was occupied by Madame Royale and Madame Elisabeth. The King's apartments were on the third story. He slept in the great room, and made a study of the turret closet. There was a kitchen separated from the King's chamber by a small dark room, which had been successively occupied by M. de Chamilly and M. de Hue. The fourth story was shut up; and on the ground floor there were kitchens of which no use was made." --"Journal," p. 96.]

The Tower was a square building, with a round tower at each corner and a small turret on one side, usually called the Tourelle. In the narrative of the Duchesse d'Angouleme she says that the soldiers who escorted the royal prisoners wished to take the King alone to the Tower, and his family to the Palace of the Temple, but that on the way Manuel received an order to imprison them all in the Tower, where so little provision had been made for their reception that Madame Elisabeth slept in the kitchen. The royal family were accompanied by the Princesse de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter Pauline, Mesdames de Navarre, de Saint-Brice, Thibaut, and Bazire, MM. de Hug and de Chamilly, and three men-servants--An order from the Commune soon removed these devoted attendants, and M. de Hue alone was permitted to return. "We all passed the day together," says Madame Royale. "My father taught my brother geography; my mother history, and to learn verses by heart; and my aunt gave him lessons in arithmetic. My father fortunately found a library which amused him, and my mother worked tapestry . . . . We went every day to walk in the garden, for the sake of my brother's health, though the King was always insulted by the guard. On the Feast of Saint Louis 'Ca Ira' was sung under the walls of the Temple. Manuel that evening brought my aunt a letter from her aunts at Rome. It was the last the family received from without. My father was no longer called King. He was treated with no kind of respect; the officers always sat in his presence and never took off their hats. They deprived him of his sword and searched his pockets . . . . Petion sent as gaoler the horrible man--[Rocher, a saddler by trade] who had broken open my father's door on the 20th June, 1792, and who had been near assassinating him. This man never left the Tower, and was indefatigable in endeavouring to torment him. One time he would sing the 'Caramgnole,' and a thousand other horrors, before us; again, knowing that my mother disliked the smoke of tobacco, he would puff it in her face, as well as in that of my father, as they happened to pass him. He took care always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom of his heart. My mother bore it with a dignity that frequently repressed his insolence." The only occasion, Madame Royale adds, on which the Queen showed any impatience at the conduct of the officials, was when a municipal officer woke the Dauphin suddenly in the night to make certain that he was safe, as though the sight of the peacefully sleeping child would not have been in itself the best assurance.

Clery, the valet de chambre of the Dauphin, having with difficulty obtained permission to resume his duties, entered the Temple on the 24th August, and for eight days shared with M. de Hue the personal attendance; but on the 2d September De Hue was arrested, seals were placed on the little room he had occupied, and Clery passed the night in that of the King. On the following morning Manuel arrived, charged by the Commune to inform the King that De Hue would not be permitted to return, and to offer to send another person. "I thank you," answered the King. "I will manage with the valet de chambre of my son; and if the Council refuse I will serve myself. I am determined to do it." On the 3d September Manual visited the Temple and assured the King that Madame de Lamballe and all the other prisoners who had been removed to La Force were well, and safely guarded. "But at three o'clock," says Madame Royale, "just after dinner, and as the King was sitting down to 'tric trac' with my mother (which he played for the purpose of having an opportunity of saying a few words to her unheard by the keepers), the most horrid shouts were heard. The officer who happened to be on guard in the room behaved well. He shut the door and the window, and even drew the curtains to prevent their seeing anything; but outside the workmen and the gaoler Rocher joined the assassins and increased the tumult. Several officers of the guard and the municipality now arrived, and on my father's asking what was the matter, a young officer replied, 'Well, since you will know, it is the head of Madame de Lamballe that they want to show you.' At these words my mother was overcome with horror; it was the only occasion on which her firmness abandoned her. The municipal officers were very angry with the young man; but the King, with his usual goodness, excused him, saying that it was his own fault, since he had questioned the officer. The noise lasted till five o'clock. We learned that the people had wished to force the door, and that the municipal officers had been enabled to prevent it only by putting a tricoloured scarf across it, and allowing six of the murderers to march round our prison with the head of the Princess, leaving at the door her body, which they would have dragged in also."

Clery was not so fortunate as to escape the frightful spectacle. He had gone down to dine with Tison and his wife, employed as servants in the Temple, and says: "We were hardly seated when a head, on the end of a pike, was presented at the window. Tison's wife gave a great cry; the assassins fancied they recognised the Queen's voice, and responded by savage laughter. Under the idea that his Majesty was still at table, they placed their dreadful trophy where it must be seen. It was the head of the Princesse de Lamballe; although bleeding, it was not disfigured, and her light hair, still in curls, hung about the pike."

At length the immense mob that surrounded the Temple gradually withdrew, "to follow the head of the Princess de Lamballe to the Palais Royal."

[The pike that bore the head was fixed before the Duc d'Orleans's window as he was going to dinner. It is said that he looked at this horrid sight without horror, went into the dining-room, sat down to table, and helped his guests without saying a word. His silence and coolness left it doubtful whether the assassins, in presenting him this bloody trophy, intended to offer him an insult or to pay him homage.--DE MOLLEVILLE'S "Annals of the French Revolution," vol. vii., p. 398.]

Meanwhile the royal family could scarcely believe that for the time their lives were saved. "My aunt and I heard the drums beating to arms all night," says Madame Royale; "my unhappy mother did not even attempt to sleep. We heard her sobs."

In the comparative tranquillity which followed the September massacres, the royal family resumed the regular habits they had adopted on entering the Temple. "The King usually rose at six in the morning," says Clery. "He shaved himself, and I dressed his hair; he then went to his reading-room, which, being very small, the municipal officer on duty remained in the bedchamber with the door open, that he might always keep the King in sight. His Majesty continued praying on his knees for some time, and then read till nine. During that interval, after putting his chamber to rights and preparing the breakfast, I went down to the Queen, who never opened her door till I arrived, in order to prevent the municipal officer from going into her apartment. At nine o'clock the Queen, the children, and Madame Elisabeth went up to the King's chamber to breakfast. At ten the King and his family went down to the Queen's chamber, and there passed the day. He employed himself in educating his son, made him recite passages from Corneille and Racine, gave him lessons in geography, and exercised him in colouring the maps. The Queen, on her part, was employed in the education of her daughter, and these different lessons lasted till eleven o'clock. The remaining time till noon was passed in needlework, knitting, or making tapestry. At one o'clock, when the weather was fine, the royal family were conducted to the garden by four municipal officers and the commander of a legion of the National Guard. As there were a number of workmen in the Temple employed in pulling down houses and building new walls, they only allowed a part of the chestnut-tree walk for the promenade, in which I was allowed to share, and where I also played with the young Prince at ball, quoits, or races. At two we returned to the Tower, where I served the dinner, at which time Santerre regularly came to the Temple, attended by two aides-de-camp. The King sometimes spoke to him,--the Queen never.

"After the meal the royal family came down into the Queen's room, and their Majesties generally played a game of piquet or tric-trac. At four o'clock the King took a little repose, the Princesses round him, each with a book . . . . When the King woke the conversation was resumed, and I gave writing lessons to his son, taking the copies, according to his instructions, from the works of, Montesquieu and other celebrated authors. After the lesson I took the young Prince into Madame Elisabeth's room, where we played at ball, and battledore and shuttlecock. In the evening the family sat round a table, while the Queen read to them from books of history, or other works proper to instruct and amuse the children. Madame Elisabeth took the book in her turn, and in this manner they read till eight o'clock. After that I served the supper of the young Prince, in which the royal family shared, and the King amused the children with charades out of a collection of French papers which he found in the library. After the Dauphin had supped, I undressed him, and the Queen heard him say his prayers. At nine the King went to supper, and afterwards went for a moment to the Queen's chamber, shook hands with her and his sister for the night, kissed his children, and then retired to the turret-room, where he sat reading till midnight. The Queen and the Princesses locked themselves in, and one of the municipal officers remained in the little room which parted their chamber, where he passed the night; the other followed his Majesty. In this manner was the time passed as long as the King remained in the small tower."

But even these harmless pursuits were too often made the means of further insulting and thwarting the unfortunate family. Commissary Le Clerc interrupted the Prince's writing lessons, proposing to substitute Republican works for those from which the King selected his copies. A smith, who was present when the Queen was reading the history of France to her children, denounced her to the Commune for choosing the period when the Connstable de Bourbon took arms against France, and said she wished to inspire her son with unpatriotic feelings; a municipal officer asserted that the multiplication table the Prince was studying would afford a means of "speaking in cipher," so arithmetic had to be abandoned. Much the same occurred even with the needlework, the Queen and Princess finished some chairbacks, which they wished to send to the Duchesse de Tarente; but the officials considered that the patterns were hieroglyphics, intended for carrying on a correspondence, and ordered that none of the Princesses work should leave the Temple. The short daily walk in the garden was also embittered by the rude behaviour of the military and municipal gaolers; sometimes, however, it afforded an opportunity for marks of sympathy to be shown. People would station themselves at the windows of houses overlooking the Temple gardens, and evince by gestures their loyal affection, and some of the sentinels showed, even by tears, that their duty was painful to them.

On the 21st September the National Convention was constituted, Petion being made president and Collot d'Herbois moving the "abolition of royalty" amidst transports of applause. That afternoon a municipal officer attended by gendarmes a cheval, and followed by a crowd of people, arrived at the Temple, and, after a flourish of trumpets, proclaimed the establishment of the French Republic. The man, says Clery, "had the voice of a Stentor." The royal family could distinctly hear the announcement of the King's deposition. "Hebert, so well known under the title of Pere Duchesne, and Destournelles were on guard. They were sitting near the door, and turned to the King with meaning smiles. He had a book in his hand, and went on reading without changing countenance. The Queen showed the same firmness. The proclamation finished, the trumpets sounded afresh. I went to the window; the people took me for Louis XVI. and I was overwhelmed with insults."

After the new decree the prisoners were treated with increased harshness. Pens, paper, ink, and pencils were taken from them. The King and Madame Elisabeth gave up all, but the Queen and her daughter each concealed a pencil. "In the beginning of October," says Madame Royale, "after my father had supped, he was told to stop, that he was not to return to his former apartments, and that he was to be separated from his family. At this dreadful sentence the Queen lost her usual courage. We parted from him with abundance of tears, though we expected to see him again in the morning.

[At nine o'clock, says Clery, the King asked to be taken to his family, but the municipal officers replied that they had "no orders for that." Shortly afterwards a boy brought the King some bread and a decanter of lemonade for his breakfast. The King gave half the bread to Clery, saying, "It seems they have forgotten your breakfast; take this, the rest is enough for me." Clery refused, but the King insisted. "I could not contain my tears," he adds; "the King perceived them, and his own fell also."]

They brought in our breakfast separately from his, however. My mother would take nothing. The officers, alarmed at her silent and concentrated sorrow, allowed us to see the King, but at meal-times only, and on condition that we should not speak low, nor in any foreign language, but loud and in 'good French.' We went down, therefore, with the greatest joy to dine with my father. In the evening, when my brother was in bed, my mother and my aunt alternately sat with him or went with me to sup with my father. In the morning, after breakfast, we remained in the King's apartments while Clery dressed our hair, as he was no longer allowed to come to my mother's room, and this arrangement gave us the pleasure of spending a few moments more with my father."

[When the first deputation from the Council of the Commune visited the Temple, and formally inquired whether the King had any complaint to make, he replied, "No; while he was permitted to remain with his family he was happy."]

The royal prisoners had no comfort except their affection for each other. At that time even common necessaries were denied them. Their small stock of linen had been lent them; by persons of the Court during the time they spent at the Feuillans. The Princesses mended their clothes every day, and after the King had gone to bed Madame Elisabeth mended his. "With much trouble," says Clrry, "I procured some fresh linen for them. But the workwomen having marked it with crowned letters, the Princesses were ordered to pick them out." The room in the great tower to which the King had been removed contained only one bed, and no other article of furniture. A chair was brought on which Clery spent the first night; painters were still at work on the room, and the smell of the paint, he says, was almost unbearable. This room was afterwards furnished by collecting from various parts of the Temple a chest of drawers, a small bureau, a few odd chairs, a chimney-glass, and a bed hung with green damask, which had been used by the captain of the guard to the Comte d'Artois. A room for the Queen was being prepared over that of the King, and she implored the workmen to finish it quickly, but it was not ready for her occupation for some time, and when she was allowed to remove to it the Dauphin was taken from her and placed with his father. When their Majesties met again in the great Tower, says Clery, there was little change in the hours fixed for meals, reading, walking and the education of their children. They were not allowed to have mass said in the Temple, and therefore commissioned Clery to get them the breviary in use in the diocese of Paris. Among the books read by the King while in the Tower were Hume's "History of England" (in the original), Tasso, and the "De Imitatione Christi." The jealous suspicions of the municipal officers led to the most absurd investigations; a draught-board was taken to pieces lest the squares should hide treasonable papers; macaroons were broken in half to see that they did not contain letters; peaches were cut open and the stones cracked; and Clery was compelled to drink the essence of soap prepared for shaving the King, under the pretence that it might contain poison.

In November the King and all the family had feverish colds, and Clery had an attack of rheumatic fever. On the first day of his illness he got up and tried to dress his master, but the King, seeing how ill he was, ordered him to lie down, and himself dressed the Dauphin. The little Prince waited on Clery all day, and in the evening the King contrived to approach his bed, and said, in a low voice, "I should like to take care of you myself, but you know how we are watched. Take courage; tomorrow you shall see my doctor." Madame Elisabeth brought the valet cooling draughts, of which she deprived herself; and after Clery was able to get up, the young Prince one night with great difficulty kept awake till eleven o'clock in order to give him a box of lozenges when he went to make the King's bed.

On 7th December a deputation from the Commune brought an order that the royal family should be deprived of "knives, razors, scissors, penknives, and all other cutting instruments." The King gave up a knife, and took from a morocco case a pair of scissors and a penknife; and the officials then searched the room, taking away the little toilet implements of gold and silver, and afterwards removing the Princesses' working materials. Returning to the King's room, they insisted upon seeing what remained in his pocket-case. "Are these toys which I have in my hand also cutting instruments?" asked the King, showing them a cork-screw, a turn-screw, and a steel for lighting. These also were taken from him. Shortly afterwards Madame Elisabeth was mending the King's coat, and, having no scissors, was compelled to break the thread with her teeth.

"What a contrast!" he exclaimed, looking at her tenderly. "You wanted nothing in your pretty house at Montreuil."

"Ah, brother," she answered, "how can I have any regret when I partake your misfortunes?"

The Queen had frequently to take on herself some of the humble duties of a servant. This was especially painful to Louis XVI. when the anniversary of some State festival brought the contrast between past and present with unusual keenness before him.

"Ah, Madame," he once exclaimed, "what an employment for a Queen of France! Could they see that at Vienna! Who would have foreseen that, in uniting your lot to mine, you would have descended so low?"

"And do you esteem as nothing," she replied, "the glory of being the wife of one of the best and most persecuted of men? Are not such misfortunes the noblest honours?"--[Alison's "History of Europe," vol. ii., p. 299.]

Meanwhile the Assembly had decided that the King should be brought to trial. Nearly all parties, except the Girondists, no matter how bitterly opposed to each other, could agree in making him the scapegoat; and the first rumour of the approaching ordeal was conveyed to the Temple by Clery's wife, who, with a friend, had permission occasionally to visit him. "I did not know how to announce this terrible news to the King," he says; "but time was pressing, and he had forbidden my concealing anything from him. In the evening, while undressing him, I gave him an account of all I had learnt, and added that there were only four days to concert some plan of corresponding with the Queen. The arrival of the municipal officer would not allow me to say more. Next morning, when the King rose, I could not get a moment for speaking with him. He went up with his son to breakfast with the Princesses, and I followed. After breakfast he talked long with the Queen, who, by a look full of trouble, made me understand that they were discussing what I had told the King. During the day I found an opportunity of describing to Madame Elisabeth how much it had cost me to augment the King's distresses by informing him of his approaching trial. She reassured me, saying that the King felt this as a mark of attachment on my part, and added, 'That which most troubles him is the fear of being separated from us.' In the evening the King told me how satisfied he was at having had warning that he was to appear before the Convention. 'Continue,' he said, 'to endeavour to find out something as to what they want to do with me. Never fear distressing me. I have agreed with my family not to seem pre-informed, in order not to compromise you.'"

On the 11th December, at five o'clock in the morning, the prisoners heard the generale beaten throughout Paris, and cavalry and cannon entered the Temple gardens. At nine the King and the Dauphin went as usual to breakfast with the Queen. They were allowed to remain together for an hour, but constantly under the eyes of their republican guardians. At last they were obliged to part, doubtful whether they would ever see each other again. The little Prince, who remained with his father, and was ignorant of the new cause for anxiety, begged hard that the King would play at ninepins with him as usual. Twice the Dauphin could not get beyond a certain number. "Each time that I get up to sixteen," he said, with some vexation, "I lose the game." The King did not reply, but Clery fancied the words made a painful impression on him.

At eleven, while the King was giving the Dauphin a reading lesson, two municipal officers entered and said they had come "to take young Louis to his mother." The King inquired why, but was only told that such were the orders of the Council. At one o'clock the Mayor of Paris, Chambon, accompanied by Chaumette, Procureur de la Commune, Santerre, commandant of the National Guard, and others, arrived at the Temple and read a decree to the King, which ordered that "Louis Capet" should be brought before the Convention. "Capet is not my name," he replied, "but that of one of my ancestors. I could have wished," he added, "that you had left my son with me during the last two hours. But this treatment is consistent with all I have experienced here. I follow you, not because I recognise the authority of the Convention, but because I can be compelled to obey it." He then followed the Mayor to a carriage which waited, with a numerous escort, at the gate of the Temple. The family left behind were overwhelmed with grief and apprehension. "It is impossible to describe the anxiety we suffered," says Madame Royale. "My mother used every endeavour with the officer who guarded her to discover what was passing; it was the first time she had condescended to question any of these men. He would tell her nothing."

Trial of the King.--Parting of the Royal Family.--Execution.

The crowd was immense as, on the morning of the 11th December, 1792, Louis XVI. was driven slowly from the Temple to the Convention, escorted by cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Paris looked like an armed camp: all the posts were doubled; the muster-roll of the National Guard was called over every hour; a picket of two hundred men watched in the court 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 sought 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 Duc 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-lait 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.

MONSIEUR.............. The eldest brother of the King, Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII.

MONSIEUR LE PRINCE.... The Prince de Conde, head of the House of Conde.

MONSIEUR LE DUC....... The Duc de Bourbon, the eldest son of the Prince de Condo (and the father of the Duc d'Enghien shot by Napoleon).

MONSIEUR LE GRAND..... The Grand Equerry under the ancien regime.

MONSIEUR LE PREMIER... The First Equerry under the ancien regime.

ENFANS DE FRANCE...... The royal children.

MADAME & MESDAMES..... Sisters or daughters of the King, or Princesses near the Throne (sometimes used also for the wife of Monsieur, the eldest brother of the King, the Princesses Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, Louise, daughters of Louis XV., and aunts of Louis XVI.)

MADAME ELISABETH...... The Princesse Elisabeth, sister of Louis XVI.

MADAME ROYALE......... The Princesse Marie Therese, daughter of Louis XVI., afterwards Duchesse d'Angouleme.

MADEMOISELLE.......... The daughter of Monsieur, the brother of the King.

THE ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A man born solely to contradict

Advised the King not to separate himself from his army

Ah, Madame, we have all been killed in our masters' service!

Alas! her griefs double mine!

Allowed her candles and as much firewood as she wanted

Better to die than to implicate anybody

Brought me her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais

Carried the idea of the prerogative of rank to a high pitch

Common and blamable practice of indulgence

Condescension which renders approbation more offensive

Customs are nearly equal to laws

Difference between brilliant theories and the simplest practice

Dignified tone which alone secures the respect due to power

Displaying her acquirements with rather too much confidence

Duc d'Orleans, when called on to give his vote for death of King

Elegant entertainments were given to Doctor Franklin

Etiquette still existed at Court, dignity alone was wanting

Extreme simplicity was the Queens first and only real mistake

Fashion of wearing a black coat without being in mourning

Favourite of a queen is not, in France, a happy one

Formed rather to endure calamity with patience than to contend

Grand-Dieu, mamma! will it be yesterday over again?

Happiness does not dwell in palaces

He is afraid to command

His ruin was resolved on; they passed to the order of the day

His seraglio in the Parc-aux-Cerfs

History of the man with the iron mask

How can I have any regret when I partake your misfortunes

I hate all that savours of fanaticism

I do not like these rhapsodies

I love the conveniences of life too well

If ever I establish a republic of women....

Indulge in the pleasure of vice and assume the credit of virtue

King (gave) the fatal order to the Swiss to cease firing

La Fayette to rescue the royal family and convey them to Rouen

Leave me in peace; be assured that I can put no heir in danger

Louis Philippe, the usurper of the inheritance of her family

Mirabeau forgot that it was more easy to do harm than good

Most intriguing little Carmelite in the kingdom

My father fortunately found a library which amused him

Never shall a drop of French blood be shed by my order

No one is more dangerous than a man clothed with recent authority

No accounting for the caprices of a woman

No ears that will discover when she (The Princess) is out of tune

None but little minds dreaded little books

Observe the least pretension on account of the rank or fortune

Of course I shall be either hissed or applauded.

On domestic management depends the preservation of their fortune

Prevent disorder from organising itself

Princes thus accustomed to be treated as divinities

Princess at 12 years was not mistress of the whole alphabet

Rabble, always ready to insult genius, virtue, and misfortune

Saw no other advantage in it than that of saving her own life

She often carried her economy to a degree of parsimony

Shocking to find so little a man in the son of the Marechal

Shun all kinds of confidence

Simplicity of the Queen's toilet began to be strongly censured

So many crimes perpetrated under that name (liberty)

Spirit of party can degrade the character of a nation

Subjecting the vanquished to be tried by the conquerors

Taken pains only to render himself beloved by his pupil

Tastes may change

That air of truth which always carries conviction

The author (Beaumarchais) was sent to prison soon afterwards

The Jesuits were suppressed

The three ministers, more ambitious than amorous

The charge of extravagance

The emigrant party have their intrigues and schemes

The King delighted to manage the most disgraceful points

The anti-Austrian party, discontented and vindictive

There is not one real patriot among all this infamous horde

They say you live very poorly here, Moliere

Those muskets were immediately embarked and sold to the Americans

Those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it

To be formally mistress, a husband had to be found

True nobility, gentlemen, consists in giving proofs of it

Ventured to give such rash advice: inoculation

Was but one brilliant action that she could perform

We must have obedience, and no reasoning

Well, this is royally ill played!

What do young women stand in need of?--Mothers!

When kings become prisoners they are very near death

While the Queen was blamed, she was blindly imitated

Whispered in his mother's ear, "Was that right?"

"Would be a pity," she said, "to stop when so fairly on the road"

Young Prince suffered from the rickets

Your swords have rusted in their scabbards

MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD

By Stewarton

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

The present work contains particulars of the great Napoleon not to be

found in any other publication, and forms an interesting addition to the

information generally known about him.

The writer of the Letters (whose name is said to have been Stewarton, and

who had been a friend of the Empress Josephine in her happier, if less

brilliant days) gives full accounts of the lives of nearly all Napoleon's

Ministers and Generals, in addition to those of a great number of other

characters, and an insight into the inner life of those who formed

Napoleon's Court.

All sorts and conditions of men are dealt with--adherents who have come

over from the Royalist camp, as well as those who have won their way

upwards as soldiers, as did Napoleon himself. In fact, the work abounds

with anecdotes of Napoleon, Talleyrand, Fouche, and a host of others, and

astounding particulars are given of the mysterious disappearance of those

persons who were unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of Napoleon.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

At Cardinal Caprara's

Cardinal Fesch

Episode at Mme. Miot's

Napoleon's Guard

A Grand Dinner

Chaptal

Turreaux

Carrier

Barrere

Cambaceres

Pauline Bonaparte

SECRET COURT MEMOIRS.

THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD.

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.

PARIS, November 10th, 1805.

MY LORD,--The Letters I have written to you were intended for the private

entertainment of a liberal friend, and not for the general perusal of a

severe public. Had I imagined that their contents would have penetrated

beyond your closet or the circle of your intimate acquaintance, several

of the narratives would have been extended, while others would have been

compressed; the anecdotes would have been more numerous, and my own

remarks fewer; some portraits would have been left out, others drawn, and

all better finished. I should then have attempted more frequently to

expose meanness to contempt, and treachery to abhorrence; should have

lashed more severely incorrigible vice, and oftener held out to ridicule

puerile vanity and outrageous ambition. In short, I should then have

studied more to please than to instruct, by addressing myself seldomer to

the reason than to the passions.

I subscribe, nevertheless, to your observation, "that the late long war

and short peace, with the enslaved state of the Press on the Continent,

would occasion a chasm in the most interesting period of modern history,

did not independent and judicious travellers or visitors abroad collect

and forward to Great Britain (the last refuge of freedom) some materials

which, though scanty and insufficient upon the whole, may, in part, rend

the veil of destructive politics, and enable future ages to penetrate

into mysteries which crime in power has interest to render impenetrable

to the just reprobation of honour and of virtue." If, therefore, my

humble labours can preserve loyal subjects from the seduction of

traitors, or warn lawful sovereigns and civilized society of the alarming

conspiracy against them, I shall not think either my time thrown away, or

fear the dangers to which publicity might expose me were I only suspected

here of being an Anglican author. Before the Letters are sent to the

press I trust, however, to your discretion the removal of everything that

might produce a discovery, or indicate the source from which you have

derived your information.

Although it is not usual in private correspondence to quote authorities,

I have sometimes done so; but satisfied, as I hope you are, with my

veracity, I should have thought the frequent productions of any better

pledge than the word of a man of honour an insult to your feelings. I

have, besides, not related a fact that is not recent and well known in

our fashionable and political societies; and of ALL the portraits I have

delineated, the originals not only exist, but are yet occupied in the

present busy scene of the Continent, and figuring either at Courts, in

camps, or in Cabinets.

LETTER I.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--I promised you not to pronounce in haste on persons and events

passing under my eyes; thirty-one months have quickly passed away since I

became an attentive spectator of the extraordinary transactions, and of

the extraordinary characters of the extraordinary Court and Cabinet of

St. Cloud. If my talents to delineate equal my zeal to inquire and my

industry to examine; if I am as able a painter as I have been an

indefatigable observer, you will be satisfied, and with your approbation

at once sanction and reward my labours.

With most Princes, the supple courtier and the fawning favourite have

greater influence than the profound statesman and subtle Minister; and

the determinations of Cabinets are, therefore, frequently prepared in

drawing-rooms, and discussed in the closet. The politician and the

counsellor are frequently applauded or censured for transactions which

the intrigues of antechambers conceived, and which cupidity and favour

gave power to promulgate.

It is very generally imagined, but falsely, that Napoleon Bonaparte

governs, or rather tyrannizes, by himself, according to his own capacity,

caprices, or interest; that all his acts, all his changes, are the sole

consequence of his own exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited

authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and

his crimes, originate entirely with himself; that the fortunate hero who

marched triumphant over the Alps, and the dastardly murderer that

disgraced human nature at Jaffa, because the same person, owed victory to

himself alone, and by himself alone commanded massacre; that the same

genius, unbiased and unsupported, crushed factions, erected a throne, and

reconstructed racks; that the same mind restored and protected

Christianity, and proscribed and assassinated a D'Enghien.

All these contradictions, all these virtues and vices, may be found in

the same person; but Bonaparte, individually or isolated, has no claim to

them. Except on some sudden occasions that call for immediate decision,

no Sovereign rules less by himself than Bonaparte; because no Sovereign

is more surrounded by favourites and counsellors, by needy adventurers

and crafty intriguers.

What Sovereign has more relatives to enrich, or services to recompense;

more evils to repair, more jealousies to dread, more dangers to fear,

more clamours to silence; or stands more in need of information and

advice? Let it be remembered that he, who now governs empires and

nations, ten years ago commanded only a battery; and five years ago was

only a military chieftain. The difference is as immense, indeed, between

the sceptre of a Monarch and the sword of a general, as between the wise

legislator who protects the lives and property of his contemporaries, and

the hireling robber who wades through rivers of blood to obtain plunder

at the expense and misery of generations. The lower classes of all

countries have produced persons who have distinguished themselves as

warriors; but what subject has yet usurped a throne, and by his eminence

and achievements, without infringing on the laws and liberties of his

country, proved himself worthy to reign? Besides, the education which

Bonaparte received was entirely military; and a man (let his innate

abilities be ever so surprising or excellent) who, during the first

thirty years of his life, has made either military or political tactics

or exploits his only study, certainly cannot excel equally in the Cabinet

and in the camp. It would be as foolish to believe, as absurd to expect,

a perfection almost beyond the reach of any man; and of Bonaparte more

than of any one else. A man who, like him, is the continual slave of his

own passions, can neither be a good nor a just, an independent nor

immaculate master.

Among the courtiers who, ever since Bonaparte was made First Consul, have

maintained a great ascendency over him, is the present Grand Marshal of

his Court, the general of division, Duroc. With some parts, but greater

presumption, this young man is destined by his master to occupy the most

confidential places near his person; and to his care are entrusted the

most difficult and secret missions at foreign Courts. When he is absent

from France, the liberty of the Continent is in danger; and when in the

Tuileries, or at St. Cloud, Bonaparte thinks himself always safe.

Gerard Christophe Michel Duroc was born at Ponta-Mousson, in the

department of Meurthe, on the 25th of October, 1772, of poor but honest

parents. His father kept a petty chandler's shop; but by the interest

and generosity of Abbe Duroc, a distant relation, he was so well educated

that, in March, 1792, he became a sub-lieutenant of the artillery. In

1796 he served in Italy, as a captain, under General Andreossy, by whom

he was recommended to General l'Espinasse, then commander of the

artillery of the army of Italy, who made him an aide-de-camp. In that

situation Bonaparte remarked his activity, and was pleased with his

manners, and therefore attached him as an aide-de-camp to himself. Duroc

soon became a favourite with his chief, and, notwithstanding the

intrigues of his rivals, he has continued to be so to this day.

It has been asserted, by his enemies no doubt, that by implicit obedience

to his general's orders, by an unresisting complacency, and by executing,

without hesitation, the most cruel mandates of his superior, he has fixed

himself so firmly in his good opinion that he is irremovable. It has

also been stated that it was Duroc who commanded the drowning and burying

alive of the wounded French soldiers in Italy, in 1797; and that it was

he who inspected their poisoning in Syria, in 1799, where he was wounded

during the siege of St. Jean d' Acre. He was among the few officers whom

Bonaparte selected for his companions when he quitted the army of Egypt,

and landed with him in France in October, 1799.

Hitherto Duroc had only shown himself as a brave soldier and obedient

officer; but after the revolution which made Bonaparte a First Consul, he

entered upon another career. He was then, for the first time, employed

in a diplomatic mission to Berlin, where he so far insinuated himself

into the good graces of their Prussian Majesties that the King admitted

him to the royal table, and on the parade at Potsdam presented him to his

generals and officers as an aide-de-camp 'du plus grand homme que je

connais; whilst the Queen gave him a scarf knitted by her own fair hands.

The fortunate result of Duroc's intrigues in Prussia, in 1799, encouraged

Bonaparte to despatch him, in 1801, to Russia; where Alexander I.

received him with that noble condescension so natural, to this great and

good Prince. He succeeded at St. Petersburg in arranging the political

and commercial difficulties and disagreements between France and Russia;

but his proposal for a defensive alliance was declined.

An anecdote is related of his political campaign in the North, upon the

barren banks of the Neva, which, in causing much entertainment to the

inhabitants of the fertile banks of the Seine, has not a little

displeased the military diplomatist.

Among Talleyrand's female agents sent to cajole Paul I. during the latter

part of his reign, was a Madame Bonoeil, whose real name is De F-----.

When this unfortunate Prince was no more, most of the French male and

female intriguers in Russia thought it necessary to shift their quarters,

and to expect, on the territory of neutral Prussia, farther instructions

from Paris, where and how to proceed. Madame Bonoeil had removed to

Konigsberg. In the second week of May, 1801, when Duroc passed through

that town for St. Petersburg, he visited this lady, according to the

orders of Bonaparte, and obtained from her a list of the names of the

principal persons who were inclined to be serviceable to France, and

might be trusted by him upon the present occasion. By inattention or

mistake she had misspelled the name of one of the most trusty and active

adherents of Bonaparte; and Duroc, therefore, instead of addressing

himself to the Polish Count de S--------lz, went to the Polish Count de

S-----tz. This latter was as much flattered as surprised, upon seeing an

aide-de-camp and envoy of the First Consul of France enter his

apartments, seldom visited before but by usurers, gamesters, and

creditors; and, on hearing the object of this visit, began to think

either the envoy mad or himself dreaming. Understanding, however, that

money would be of little consideration, if the point desired by the First

Consul could be carried, he determined to take advantage of this

fortunate hit, and invited Duroc to sup with him the same evening; when

he promised him he should meet with persons who could do his business,

provided his pecuniary resources were as ample as he had stated.

This Count de S-----tz was one of the most extravagant and profligate

subjects that Russia had acquired by the partition of Poland. After

squandering away his own patrimony, he had ruined his mother and two

sisters, and subsisted now entirely by gambling and borrowing. Among his

associates, in similar circumstances with himself, was a Chevalier de

Gausac, a French adventurer, pretending to be an emigrant from the

vicinity of Toulouse. To him was communicated what had happened in the

morning, and his advice was asked how to act in the evening. It was soon

settled that De Gausac should be transformed into a Russian Count de

W-----, a nephew and confidential secretary of the Chancellor of the same

name; and that one Caumartin, another French adventurer, who taught

fencing at St. Petersburg, should act the part of Prince de M-----, an

aide-de-camp of the Emperor; and that all three together should strip

Duroc, and share the spoil. At the appointed hour Bonaparte's agent

arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered

him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed

before he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from

denouncing the impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret

between himself, Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses

of Caumartin excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who

soon discovered the source from which they had flowed. De Gausac had the

imprudence to return to this capital last spring, and is now shut up in

the Temple, where he probably will be forgotten.

As this loss was more ascribed to the negligence of Madame Bonoeil than

to the mismanagement of Duroc, or his want of penetration, his reception

at the Tuileries, though not so gracious as on his return from Berlin,

nineteen months before, was, however, such as convinced him that if he

had not increased, he had at the same time not lessened, the confidence

of his master; and, indeed, shortly afterwards, Bonaparte created him

first prefect of his palace, and procured him for a wife the only

daughter of a rich Spanish banker. Rumour, however, says that Bonaparte

was not quite disinterested when he commanded and concluded this match,

and that the fortune of Madame Duroc has paid for the expensive supper of

her husband with Count de S-----tz at St. Petersburg.

LETTER II.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Though the Treaty of Luneville will probably soon be buried in

the rubbish of the Treaty of Amiens, the influence of their parents in

the Cabinet of St. Cloud is as great as ever: I say their parents,

because the crafty ex-Bishop, Talleyrand, foreseeing the short existence

of these bastard diplomatic acts, took care to compliment the innocent

Joseph Bonaparte with a share in the parentage, although they were his

own exclusive offspring.

Joseph Bonaparte, who in 1797, from an attorney's clerk at Ajaccio, in

Corsica, was at once transformed into an Ambassador to the Court of Rome,

had hardly read a treaty, or seen a despatch written, before he was

himself to conclude the one, and to dictate the other. Had he not been

supported by able secretaries, Government would soon have been convinced

that it is as impossible to confer talents as it is easy to give places

to men to whom Nature has refused parts, and on whom a scanty or

neglected education has bestowed no improvements. Deep and reserved,

like a true Italian, but vain and ambitious, like his brothers, under the

character of a statesman, he has only been the political puppet of

Talleyrand. If he has sometimes been applauded upon the stages where he

has been placed, he is also exposed to the hooting and hisses of the

suffering multitude; while the Minister pockets undisturbed all the

entrance-money, and conceals his wickedness and art under the cloak of

Joseph; which protects him besides against the anger and fury of

Napoleon. No negotiation of any consequence is undertaken, no diplomatic

arrangements are under consideration, but Joseph is always consulted, and

Napoleon informed of the consultation. Hence none of Bonaparte's

Ministers have suffered less from his violence and resentment than

Talleyrand, who, in the political department, governs him who governs

France and Italy.

As early as 1800, Talleyrand determined to throw the odium of his own

outrages against the law of nations upon the brother of his master.

Lucien Bonaparte was that year sent Ambassador to Spain, but not sharing

with the Minister the large profits of his appointment, his diplomatic

career was but short. Joseph is as greedy and as ravenous as Lucien, but

not so frank or indiscreet. Whether he knew or not of Talleyrand's

immense gain by the pacification at Luneville in February, 1801, he did

not neglect his own individual interest. The day previous to the

signature of this treaty, he despatched a courier to the rich army

contractor, Collot, acquainting him in secret of the issue of the

negotiation, and ordering him at the same time to purchase six millions

of livres--L 250,000--in the stocks on his account. On Joseph's arrival

at Paris, Collot sent him the State bonds for the sum ordered, together

with a very polite letter; but though he waited on the grand pacificator

several times afterwards, all admittance was refused, until a douceur of

one million of livres--nearly L 42,000--of Collot's private profit opened

the door. In return, during the discussions between France and England

in the summer of 1801, and in the spring of 1802, Collot was continued

Joseph's private agent, and shared with his patron, within twelve months,

a clear gain of thirty-two millions of livres.

Some of the secret articles of the Treaty of Luneville gave Austria,

during the insurrection in Switzerland, in the autumn of 1802, an

opportunity and a right to make representations against the interference

of France; a circumstance which greatly displeased Bonaparte, who

reproached Talleyrand for his want of foresight, and of having been

outwitted by the Cabinet of Vienna. The Minister, on the very next day,

laid before his master the correspondence that had passed between him and

Joseph Bonaparte, during the negotiation concerning these secret

articles, which were found to have been entirely proposed and settled by

Joseph; who had been induced by his secretary and factotum (a creature of

Talleyrand) to adopt sentiments for which that Minister had been paid,

according to report, six hundred thousand livres--L25,000. Several other

tricks have in the same manner been played upon Joseph, who,

notwithstanding, has the modesty to consider himself (much to the

advantage and satisfaction of Talleyrand) the first statesman in Europe,

and the good fortune to be thought so by his brother Napoleon.

When a rupture with England was apprehended, in the spring of 1803,

Talleyrand never signed a despatch that was not previously communicated

to, and approved by Joseph, before its contents were sanctioned by

Napoleon. This precaution chiefly continued him in place when Lord

Whitworth left this capital,--a departure that incensed Napoleon to such

a degree that he entirely forgot the dignity of his rank amidst his

generals, a becoming deportment to the members of the diplomatic corps,

and his duty to his mother and brothers, who all more or less experienced

the effects of his violent passions. He thus accosted Talleyrand, who

purposely arrived late at his circle:

"Well! the English Ambassador is gone; and we must again go to war. Were

my generals as great fools as some of my Ministers, I should despair

indeed of the issue of my contest with these insolent islanders. Many

believe that had I been more ably supported in my Cabinet, I should not

have been under the necessity of taking the field, as a rupture might

have been prevented."

"Such, Citizen First Consul!" answered the trembling and bowing Minister,

"is not the opinion of the Counsellor of State, Citizen Joseph

Bonaparte."

"Well, then," said Napoleon, as recollecting himself, "England wishes for

war, and she shall suffer for it. This shall be a war of extermination,

depend upon it."

The name of Joseph alone moderated Napoleon's fury, and changed its

object. It is with him what the harp of David was with Saul. Talleyrand

knows it, and is no loser by that knowledge. I must, however, in

justice, say that, had Bonaparte followed his Minister's advice, and

suffered himself to be entirely guided by his counsel, all hostilities

with England at that time might have been avoided; her Government would

have been lulled into security by the cession of Malta, and some

commercial regulations, and her future conquest, during a time of peace,

have been attempted upon plans duly organized, that might have ensured

success. He never ceased to repeat, "Citizen First Consul! some few

years longer peace with Great Britain, and the 'Te Deums' of modern

Britons for the conquest and possession of Malta, will be considered by

their children as the funeral hymns of their liberty and independence."

It was upon this memorable occasion of Lord Whitworth's departure, that

Bonaparte is known to have betrayed the most outrageous acts of passion;

he rudely forced his mother from his closet, and forbade his own sisters

to approach his person; he confined Madame Bonaparte for several hours to

her chamber; he dismissed favourite generals; treated with ignominy

members of his Council of State; and towards his physician, secretaries,

and principal attendants, he committed unbecoming and disgraceful marks

of personal outrage. I have heard it affirmed that, though her husband,

when shutting her up in her dressing-room, put the key in his pocket,

Madame Napoleon found means to resent the ungallant behaviour of her

spouse, with the assistance of Madame Remusat.

LETTER III.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--No act of Bonaparte's government has occasioned so many, so

opposite, and so violent debates, among the remnants of revolutionary

factions comprising his Senate and Council of State, as the introduction

and execution of the religious concordat signed with the Pope. Joseph

was here again the ostensible negotiator, though he, on this as well as

on former occasions, concluded nothing that had not been prepared and

digested by Talleyrand.

Bonaparte does not in general pay much attention to the opinions of

others when they do not agree with his own views and interests, or

coincide with his plans of reform or innovation; but having in his public

career professed himself by turns an atheist and an infidel, the

worshipper of Christ and of Mahomet, he could not decently silence those

who, after deserting or denying the God of their forefathers and of their

youth, continued constant and firm in their apostasy. Of those who

deliberated concerning the restoration or exclusion of Christianity, and

the acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz,

Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real,

Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis,

Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte

for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential

counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, for or against the Christian

religion, were presented to the First Consul by uninvited and volunteer

counsellors,--all differing as much from one another as the members of

his own Privy Council.

Many persons do Madame Bonaparte, the mother, the honour of supposing

that to her assiduous representations is principally owing the recall of

the priests, and the restoration of the altars of Christ. She certainly

is the most devout, or rather the most superstitious of her family, and

of her name; but had not Talleyrand and Portalis previously convinced

Napoleon of the policy of reestablishing a religion which, for fourteen

centuries, had preserved the throne of the Bourbons from the machinations

of republicans and other conspirators against monarchy, it is very

probable that her representations would have been as ineffective as her

piety or her prayers. So long ago as 1796 she implored the mercy of

Napoleon for the Roman Catholics in Italy; and entreated him to spare the

Pope and the papal territory, at the very time that his soldiers were

laying waste and ravaging the legacy of Bologna and of Ravenna, both

incorporated with his new-formed Cisalpine Republic; where one of his

first acts of sovereignty, in the name of the then sovereign people, was

the confiscation of Church lands and the sale of the estates of the

clergy.

Of the prelates who with Joseph Bonaparte signed the concordat, the

Cardinal Gonsalvi and the Bishop Bernier have, by their labours and

intrigues, not a little contributed to the present Church establishment,

in this country; and to them Napoleon is much indebted for the intrusion

of the Bonaparte, dynasty, among the houses of sovereign Princes. The

former, intended from his youth for the Church, sees neither honour in

this world, nor hopes for any blessing in the next, but exclusively from

its bosom and its doctrine. With capacity to figure as a country curate,

he occupies the post of the chief Secretary of State to the Pope; and

though nearly of the same age, but of a much weaker constitution than his

Sovereign, he was ambitious enough to demand Bonaparte's promise of

succeeding to the Papal See, and weak and wicked enough to wish and

expect to survive a benefactor of a calmer mind and better health than

himself. It was he who encouraged Bonaparte to require the presence of

Pius VII. in France, and who persuaded this weak pontiff to undertake a

journey that has caused so much scandal among the truly faithful; and

which, should ever Austria regain its former supremacy in Italy, will

send the present Pope to end his days in a convent, and make the

successors of St. Peter what this Apostle was himself, a Bishop of Rome,

and nothing more.

Bernier was a curate in La Vendee before the Revolution, and one of those

priests who lighted the torch of civil war in that unfortunate country,

under pretence of defending the throne of his King and the altars of his

God. He not only possessed great popularity among the lower classes, but

acquired so far the confidence of the Vendean chiefs that he was

appointed one of the supreme and directing Council of the Royalists and

Chouans. Even so late as the summer of 1799 he continued not only

unsuspected, but trusted by the insurgents in the Western departments. In

the winter, however, of the same year he had been gained over by

Bonaparte's emissaries, and was seen at his levies in the Tuileries. It

is stated that General Brune made him renounce his former principles,

desert his former companions, and betray to the then First Consul of the

French Republic the secrets of the friends of lawful monarchy, of the

faithful subjects of Louis XVIII. His perfidy has been rewarded with one

hundred and fifty thousand livres in ready money, with the see of

Orleans, and with a promise of a cardinal's hat. He has also, with the

Cardinals Gonsalvi, Caprara, Fesch, Cambaceres, and Mauri, Bonaparte's

promise, and, of course, the expectation of the Roman tiara. He was one

of the prelates who officiated at the late coronation, and is now

confided in as a person who has too far committed himself with his

legitimate Prince, and whose past treachery, therefore, answers for his

future fidelity.

This religious concordat of the 10th September, 1801, as well as all

other constitutional codes emating from revolutionary authorities,

proscribes even in protecting. The professors and protectors of the

religion of universal peace, benevolence, and forgiveness banish in this

concordat from France forever the Cardinals Rohan and Montmorency, and

the Bishop of Arras, whose dutiful attachment to their unfortunate Prince

would, in better times and in a more just and generous nation, have been

recompensed with distinctions, and honoured even by magnanimous foes.

When Madame Napoleon was informed by her husband of the necessity of

choosing her almoner and chaplain, and of attending regularly the Mass,

she first fell a-laughing, taking it merely for a joke; the serious and

severe looks, and the harsh and threatening expressions of the First

Consul soon, however, convinced her how much she was mistaken. To evince

her repentance, she on the very next day attended her mother-in-law to

church, who was highly edified by the sudden and religious turn of her

daughter, and did not fail to ascribe to the efficacious interference of

one of her favourite saints this conversion of a profane sinner. But

Napoleon was not the dupe of this church-going mummery of his wife, whom

he ordered his spies to watch; these were unfortunate enough to discover

that she went to the Mass more to fill her appointments with her lovers

than to pray to her Saviour; and that even by the side of her mother she

read billets-doux and love-letters when that pious lady supposed that she

read her prayers, because her eyes were fixed upon her breviary. Without

relating to any one this discovery of his Josephine's frailties,

Napoleon, after a violent connubial fracas and reprimand, and after a

solitary confinement of her for six days, gave immediate orders to have

the chapels of the Tuileries and of St. Cloud repaired; and until these

were ready, Cardinal Cambaceres and Bernier, by turns, said the Mass, in

her private apartments; where none but selected favourites or favoured

courtiers were admitted. Madame Napoleon now never neglects the Mass,

but if not accompanied by her husband is escorted by a guard of honour,

among whom she knows that he has several agents watching her motions and

her very looks.

In the month of June, 1803; I dined with Viscomte de Segur, and Joseph

and Lucien Bonaparte were among the guests. The latter jocosely remarked

with what facility the French Christians had suffered themselves to be

hunted in and out of their temples, according to the fanaticism or policy

of their rulers; which he adduced as a proof of the great progress of

philosophy and toleration in France. A young officer of the party,

Jacquemont, a relation of the former husband of the present Madame

Lucien, observed that he thought it rather an evidence of the

indifference of the French people to all religion; the consequence of the

great havoc the tenets of infidelity and of atheism had made among the

flocks of the faithful. This was again denied by Bonaparte's

aide-de-camp, Savary, who observed that, had this been the case, the

First Consul (who certainly was as well acquainted with the religious

spirit of Frenchmen as anybody else) would not have taken the trouble to

conclude a religious concordat, nor have been at the expense of providing

for the clergy. To this assertion Joseph nodded an assent.

When the dinner was over, De Segur took me to a window, expressing his

uneasiness at what he called the imprudence of Jacquemont, who, he

apprehended, from Joseph's silence and manner, would not escape

punishment for having indirectly blamed both the restorer of religion and

his plenipotentiary. These apprehensions were justified. On the next

day Jacquemont received orders to join the colonial depot at Havre; but

refusing to obey, by giving in his resignation as a captain, he was

arrested, shut up in the Temple, and afterwards transported to Cayenne or

Madagascar. His relatives and friends are still ignorant whether he is

dead or alive, and what is or has been his place of exile. To a petition

presented by Jacquemont's sister, Madame de Veaux, Joseph answered that

"he never interfered with the acts of the haute police of his brother

Napoleon's Government, being well convinced both of its justice and

moderation."

LETTER IV.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--That Bonaparte had, as far back as February, 1803 (when the

King of Prussia proposed to Louis XVIII. the formal renunciation of his

hereditary rights in favour of the First Consul), determined to assume

the rank and title, with the power of a Sovereign, nobody can doubt. Had

it not been for the war with England, he would, in the spring of that

year, or twelve months earlier, have proclaimed himself Emperor of the

French, and probably would have been acknowledged as such by all other

Princes. To a man so vain and so impatient, so accustomed to command and

to intimidate, this suspension of his favourite plan was a considerable

disappointment, and not a little increased his bitter and irreconcilable

hatred of Great Britain.

Here, as well as in foreign countries, the multitude pay homage only to

Napoleon's uninterrupted prosperity; without penetrating or considering

whether it be the consequence of chance or of well-digested plans;

whether he owes his successes to his own merit or to a blind fortune. He

asserted in his speech to the constitutional authorities, immediately

after hostilities had commenced with England, that the war would be of

short duration, and he firmly believed what he said. Had he by his

gunboats, or by his intrigues or threats, been enabled to extort a second

edition of the Peace of Amiens, after a warfare of some few months, all

mouths would have been ready to exclaim, "Oh, the illustrious warrior!

Oh, the profound politician!" Now, after three ineffectual campaigns on

the coast, when the extravagance and ambition of our Government have

extended the contagion of war over the Continent; when both our direct

offers of peace, and the negotiations and mediations of our allies, have

been declined by, or proved unavailing with, the Cabinet of St. James,

the inconsistency, the ignorance, and the littleness of the fortunate

great man seem to be not more remembered than the outrages and

encroachments that have provoked Austria and Russia to take the field.

Should he continue victorious, and be in a position to dictate another

Peace of Luneville, which probably would be followed by another pacific

overture to or from England, mankind will again be ready to call out,

"Oh, the illustrious warrior! Oh, the profound politician! He foresaw,

in his wisdom, that a Continental war was necessary to terrify or to

subdue his maritime foe; that a peace with England could be obtained only

in Germany; and that this war must be excited by extending the power of

France on the other side of the Alps. Hence his coronation as a King of

Italy; hence his incorporation of Parma and Genoa with France; and hence

his donation of Piombino and Lucca to his brother-in-law, Bacchiochi!"

Nowhere in history have I read of men of sense being so easily led astray

as in our times, by confounding fortuitous events with consequences

resulting from preconcerted plans and well-organized designs.

Only rogues can disseminate and fools believe that the disgrace of

Moreau, and the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, of Pichegru, and Georges,

were necessary as footsteps to Bonaparte's Imperial throne; and that

without the treachery of Mehee de la Touche, and the conspiracy he

pretended to have discovered, France would still have been ruled by a

First Consul. It is indeed true, that this plot is to be counted (as the

imbecility of Melas, which lost the battle of Marengo) among those

accidents presenting themselves apropos to serve the favourite of fortune

in his ambitious views; but without it, he would equally have been hailed

an Emperor of the French in May, 1804. When he came from the coast, in

the preceding winter, and was convinced of the impossibility of making

any impression on the British Islands with his flotilla, he convoked his

confidential Senators, who then, with Talleyrand, settled the Senatus

Consultum which appeared five months afterwards. Mehee's correspondence

with Mr. Drake was then known to him; but he and the Minister of Police

were both unacquainted with the residence and arrival of Pichegru and

Georges in France, and of their connection with Moreau; the particulars

of which were first disclosed to them in the February following, when

Bonaparte had been absent from his army of England six weeks. The

assumption of the Imperial dignity procured him another decent

opportunity of offering his olive-branch to those who had caused his

laurels to wither, and by whom, notwithstanding his abuse, calumnies, and

menaces, he would have been more proud to be saluted Emperor than by all

the nations upon the Continent. His vanity, interest, and policy, all

required this last degree of supremacy and elevation at that period.

Bonaparte had so well penetrated the weak side of Moreau's character

that, although he could not avoid doing justice to this general's

military talents and exploits, he neither esteemed him as a citizen nor

dreaded him as a rival. Moreau possessed great popularity; but so did

Dumourier and Pichegru before him: and yet neither of them had found

adherents enough to shake those republican governments with which they

avowed themselves openly discontented, and against which they secretly

plotted. I heard Talleyrand say, at Madame de Montlausier's, in the

presence of fifty persons, "Napoleon Bonaparte had never anything to

apprehend from General Moreau, and from his popularity, even at the head

of an army. Dumourier, too, was at the head of an army when he revolted

against the National Convention; but had he not saved himself by flight

his own troops would have delivered him up to be punished as a traitor.

Moreau, and his popularity, could only be dangerous to the Bonaparte

dynasty were he to survive Napoleon, had not this Emperor wisely averted

this danger." From this official declaration of Napoleon's confidential

Minister, in a society of known anti-imperialists, I draw the conclusion

that Moreau will never more, during the present reign, return to France.

How very feeble, and how badly advised must this general have been, when,

after his condemnation to two years' imprisonment, he accepted a

perpetual exile, and renounced all hopes of ever again entering his own

country. In the Temple, or in any other prison, if he had submitted to

the sentence pronounced against him, he would have caused Bonaparte more

uneasiness than when at liberty, and been more a point of rally to his

adherents and friends than when at his palace of Grosbois, because

compassion and pity must have invigorated and sharpened their feelings.

If report be true, however, he did not voluntarily exchange imprisonment

for exile; racks were shown him; and by the act of banishment was placed

a poisonous draught. This report gains considerable credit when it is

remembered that, immediately after his condemnation, Moreau furnished his

apartments in the Temple in a handsome manner, so as to be lodged well,

if not comfortably, with his wife and child, whom, it is said, he was not

permitted to see before he had accepted Bonaparte's proposal of

transportation.

It may be objected to this supposition that the man in power, who did not

care about the barefaced murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and the secret

destruction of Pichegru, could neither much hesitate, nor be very

conscientious about adding Moreau to the number of his victims. True,

but the assassin in authority is also generally a politician. The

untimely end of the Duc d'Enghien and of Pichegru was certainly lamented

and deplored by the great majority of the French people; but though they

had many who pitied their fate, but few had any relative interest to

avenge it; whilst in the assassination of Moreau, every general, every

officer, and every soldier of his former army, might have read the

destiny reserved for himself by that chieftain, who did not conceal his

preference of those who had fought under him in Italy and Egypt, and his

mistrust and jealousy of those who had vanquished under Moreau in

Germany; numbers of whom had already perished at St. Domingo, or in the

other colonies, or were dispersed in separate and distant garrisons of

the mother country. It has been calculated that of eighty-four generals

who made, under Moreau, the campaign of 1800, and who survived the Peace

of Lundville, sixteen had been killed or died at St. Domingo, four at

Guadeloupe, ten in Cayenne, nine at Ile de France, and eleven at l'Ile

Reunion and in Madagascar. The mortality among the officers and men has

been in proportion.

An anecdote is related of Pichegru, which does honour to the memory of

that unfortunate general. Fouche paid him a visit in prison the day

before his death, and offered him "Bonaparte's commission as a

Field-marshal, and a diploma as a grand officer of the Legion of Honour,

provided he would turn informer against Moreau, of whose treachery

against himself in 1797 he was reminded. On the other hand, he was

informed that, in consequence of his former denials, if he persisted in

his refractory conduct, he should never more appear before any judge, but

that the affairs of State and the safety of the country required that he

should be privately despatched in his gaol."

"So," answered this virtuous and indignant warrior, "you will spare my

life only upon condition that I prove myself unworthy to live. As this

is the case, my choice is made without hesitation; I am prepared to

become your victim, but I will never be numbered among your accomplices.

Call in your executioners; I am ready to die as I have lived, a man of

honour, and an irreproachable citizen."

Within twenty-four hours after this answer, Pichegru was no more.

That the Duc d'Enghien was shot on the night of the 21st of March, 1804,

in the wood or in the ditch of the castle at Vincennes, is admitted even

by Government; but who really were his assassins is still unknown. Some

assert that he was shot by the grenadiers of Bonaparte's Italian guard;

others say, by a detachment of the Gendarmes d'Elite; and others again,

that the men of both these corps refused to fire, and that General Murat,

hearing the troops murmur, and fearing their mutiny, was himself the

executioner of this young and innocent Prince of the House of Bourbon, by

riding up to him and blowing out his brains with a pistol. Certain it is

that Murat was the first, and Louis Bonaparte the second in command, on

this dreadful occasion.

LETTER V.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--Thanks to Talleyrand's political emigration, our Government has

never been in ignorance of the characters and foibles of the leading

members among the emigrants in England. Otto, however, finished their

picture, but added, some new groups to those delineated by his

predecessor. It was according to his plan that the expedition of Mehee

de la Touche was undertaken, and it was in following his instructions

that the campaign of this traitor succeeded so well in Great Britain.

Under the Ministry of Vergennes, of Montmorin, and of Delessart, Mehee

had been employed as a spy in Russia, Sweden, and Poland, and acquitted

himself perfectly to the satisfaction of his masters. By some accident

or other, Delessart discovered, however, in December, 1791, that he had,

while pocketing the money of the Cabinet of Versailles, sold its secrets

to the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. He, of course, was no longer trusted

as a spy, and therefore turned a Jacobin, and announced himself to

Brissot as a persecuted patriot. All the calumnies against this Minister

in Brissot's daily paper, Le Patriote Francois, during January, February,

and March, 1792, were the productions of Mehee's malicious heart and able

pen. Even after they had sent Delessart a State prisoner to Orleans, his

inveteracy continued, and in September the same year he went to

Versailles to enjoy the sight of the murder of his former master. Some

go so far as to say that the assassins were headed by this monster, who

aggravated cruelty by insult, and informed the dying Minister of the

hands that stabbed him, and to whom he was indebted for a premature

death.

To these and other infamous and barbarous deeds, Talleyrand was not a

stranger when he made Mehee his secret agent, and entrusted him with the

mission to England. He took, therefore, such steps that neither his

confidence could be betrayed, nor his money squandered. Mehee had

instructions how to proceed in Great Britain, but he was ignorant of the

object Government had in view by his mission; and though large sums were

promised if successful, and if he gave satisfaction by his zeal and

discretion, the money advanced him was a mere trifle, and barely

sufficient to keep him from want. He was, therefore, really distressed,

when he fixed upon some necessitous and greedy emigrants for his

instruments to play on the credulity of the English Ministers in some of

their unguarded moments. Their generosity in forbearing to avenge upon

the deluded French exiles the slur attempted to be thrown upon their

official capacity, and the ridicule intended to be cast on their private

characters, has been much approved and admired here by all liberal-minded

persons; but it has also much disappointed Bonaparte and Talleyrand, who

expected to see these emigrants driven from the only asylum which

hospitality has not refused to their misfortunes and misery.

Mehee had been promised by Talleyrand double the amount of the sums which

he could swindle from your Government; but though he did more mischief to

your country than was expected in this, and though he proved that he had

pocketed upwards of ten thousand English guineas, the wages of his

infamy, when he hinted about the recompense he expected here, Durant,

Talleyrand's chef du bureau, advised him, as a friend, not to remind the

Minister of his presence in France, as Bonaparte never pardoned a

Septembrizer, and the English guineas he possessed might be claimed and

seized as national property, to compensate some of the sufferers by the

unprovoked war with England. In vain did he address himself to his

fellow labourer in revolutionary plots, the Counsellor of State, Real,

who had been the intermedium between him and Talleyrand, when he was

first enlisted among the secret agents; instead of receiving money he

heard threats; and, therefore, with as good grace as he could, he made

the best of his disappointment; he sported a carriage, kept a mistress,

went to gambling-houses, and is now in a fair way to be reduced to the

status quo before his brilliant exploits in Great Britain.