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; that, besides, though the

wife of Louis XVI., she was not answerable for any of the acts of his

reign.

[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.”]

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, she was conducted, amidst a great concourse of

the populace, to the fatal spot where, ten months before, Louis XVI.

had perished.

[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 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. It was the only piece of news

that reached us during the whole winter.”

[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.]

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 and de Berri,

were awaiting her, attended by the Abbe Edgeworth, as chief

ecclesiastic, and a little Court of refugee nobles and officers.

[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.]

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