Their sorrows increased as time went on. The king was separated from
his family: but when the queen's grief alarmed the gaolers, the party
were allowed to take their meals together, on condition of their
speaking so as to be heard, and only in French. It now became more
necessary than ever for Clery to learn what he could of what was passing
out of doors; and Louis helped in a plan by which Clery was to tell
whatever he could learn. Louis and his sister now played battledore and
other games after dinner, in an outer room, their aunt sitting by with
her book or work. Clery sat down with his book, and the children made
all the noise they could with their play, that Clery might speak to the
princess unheard by the guard. Neither he nor the princess raised their
heads from their books, and Clery moved his lips as little as he could;
so that no one who was not listening could have supposed that he was
speaking.
The Dauphin cheered and amused his parents by his childish fun and
little pranks; but yet, every one observed that he never forgot that he
was in a prison. It was painful to see a boy so young acting with the
caution of an old person, from the consciousness of being surrounded by
enemies. Some of his caution was owing to fear, and some to the
gentleness of his temper. He was never heard to speak of the Tuileries
or of Versailles, though it was certain that he had a vivid remembrance
of the kind of life he had led there. He thought it would grieve his
parents to be reminded of their palaces, and of the days of their power.
One morning, he declared, when asked, that he had seen before an
officer who came to guard them for the first time. The officer asked
him repeatedly where he had seen him, but Louis would not say. At last,
he whispered to his mother, "It was when we were coming back from
Varennes." When any guard more civil than the rest appeared on duty,
Louis always ran with the good news to the queen. One day, a
stone-mason was employed in making holes in the doorway of the outer
room, in which large bolts were to be fixed. While the man was at
breakfast, Louis amused himself with his tools. This was an opportunity
for the king to gratify his well-known taste; and he began to work with
the mallet and chisel, to show his boy the way. The mason came back,
and, moved by seeing the king so employed, said, "When you get out, you
will be able to say that you worked at your own bars."
"Ah!" said the king, "when and how shall I get out?" Louis burst out
a-crying; and the king, throwing down the tools, went into his chamber,
and paced up and down with long strides.
It appears that the king was touched with somewhat of the same
superstition of which the queen gave occasional tokens,--like many other
sufferers in a time of suspense. No one liked to refuse to play with
Louis when he wanted to play; so, one afternoon, when the king was very
sad, he consented to a game at nine-pins, because his boy asked him.
The Dauphin twice counted sixteen, and then lost the game. "Whenever I
get sixteen," exclaimed he, a little vexed, "I always lose the game."
The king, remembering that he was the sixteenth Louis, looked very
grave; and Clery thought his mind was superstitiously impressed by the
boy's words.
In the beginning of November a feverish complaint attacked the king, and
then the whole family in turn. The wife and sister of the king assisted
Clery to nurse him, and often made his bed with their own hands. Louis,
who had slept in the king's room since the partial separation of the
family, was the next attacked. Not all that the queen could say availed
to procure permission to remain with her child during the night. Clery,
however, never left him; and Louis had soon an opportunity of showing
that he was grateful.
Before the princesses had recovered, poor Clery was more ill, with
rheumatic fever, than any of them had been. He made a great effort to
rise and attend the king, the first day; but his master, seeing the
condition he was in, sent him to bed again, and himself took up his son,
and dressed him. Louis scarcely left Clery's bedside all day, bringing
him drink, and doing all the little services he could think of. The
king found a moment to tell Clery, unobserved, that he should see the
physician the next day; and the princesses went to visit him in the
evening, when the Princess Elizabeth slipped into his hand some medicine
which had been brought for her, as she was yet far from well. It
distressed Clery to accept this, and to know how the ladies undertook
his duties,--the queen putting Louis to bed, and the Princess Elizabeth
dressing the king's hair. The Princess Elizabeth asked for medicines,
as if for herself, that Clery might have them, even after he had left
his bed, to which he was confined for six days. Among other things she
had obtained a box of ipecacuanha lozenges for his cough. Having had no
opportunity of giving these to Clery during the day, she left them with
Louis when she bade him good-night, thinking that Clery would be
up-stairs presently. This was before nine. It was just eleven when
Clery came up, to turn down the king's bed. Louis called to him in a
low voice; and Clery was afraid that he was ill, as he was not asleep.
"No," Louis said, "I am not ill; but I have a little box to give you. I
am glad you are come, at last, for I could hardly keep my eyes open; and
they have been shut several times, I believe." Seeing that Clery was
moved, Louis kissed him; and then was asleep in a minute.
At five in the morning of the 11th of December, everybody in the Temple
was awakened by the noise of cavalry and cannon entering the garden, and
the drums beating throughout the city. Louis did not know what this
meant; but his parents understood that the king was to be brought to
trial, and that this noise arose from the military preparations for the
great event. His father took him by the hand, and led him to breakfast,
as usual, at nine o'clock. Nobody said much, because the guards were in
the room; but he saw his father and mother look very expressively at
each other when he and his father were going downstairs again, at ten
o'clock. He went to his lessons, as usual, and was reading to the king,
when two officers came from the magistrates, to say that they must
immediately take Louis to his mother. Argument was useless; so Clery
was desired to go with the boy. On his return, Clery gave comfort to
the king by assuring him that Louis really was with his mother.
The king was soon after taken to the Convention, before whom he was to
be tried. Never till this day had the queen asked any question of her
guards: and to-day she obtained no information, though she made every
inquiry she could devise. The king returned at six o'clock; but he was
immediately locked up, without seeing any one. No bed had yet been
provided for Louis in his mother's room: and this night, she gave up
hers to him, and sat up. The princesses were most unwilling to leave
her in the state of agitation she was in; but she insisted upon their
going to rest. The next day, she implored that if the king might see
his wife and sister, his children should not be separated from him. The
reply was what might have been expected;--that the children must not be
made messengers between their parents; but that they might be with their
father, if they did not see the queen, till the trial was over.
Occupied as the king was with his defence, this could not be: nor would
he deprive their mother of the solace of their society: so Louis's bed
was removed to his mother's room, and no one knew when he would see his
father again.
Louis saw his father but once more. It was in the evening of Sunday,
the 20th of January. The crier, who came into the street at seven
o'clock, proclaimed the sentence that Louis Capet was to be executed the
next day.
The family were at last permitted to see the king; and at half-past
eight were told that he was ready. The queen took Louis by the hand,
and led him downstairs, the princesses following. It appears that the
guards had some idea that the king would attempt suicide; for they would
not allow him to have a knife at his dinner; and they now would not lose
sight of him, even while meeting his family. They would not have
allowed the door to be shut, but that it was a glass door, through which
they could look, on any alarm. So far from the king having thought of
suicide, it is now believed by most people that he allowed himself to be
persuaded by his counsel and friends that there was not really much
danger of his execution taking place, and that he would be permitted, at
the last moment, to appeal to the Primary Assemblies, where an appeal
would be successful. This seems confirmed by his conduct on the
scaffold. He was, as he had been through life, deceived and mistaken;
and the moment of his being undeceived was one of dreadful agony of
mind. It deprived him of all dignity and fortitude; and his struggles
were such that it required the strength of three executioners to
overpower him, and fulfil the sentence. It is to be hoped that his
family never knew this; and the mass of the crowd did not see what
happened on the scaffold; but some who did see the whole, have proved
beyond a doubt that Louis the Sixteenth showed, at last, no more dignity
in his death than in his life.
How much hope he imparted to his family during their evening interview
can now never be known; but his legal advisers and his servants gave him
such abundant assurances that the sentence could never be really
executed upon a king, that the hopes of his family were probably
sustained by their words. Not a sound, however, was heard by Clery
outside the door. The king sat between his wife and sister, and kept
Louis standing between his knees,--the Princess Royal sitting nearly in
front. There was much weeping; and most that was said was by the king.
He desired his boy to harbour no revenge against the authors of his
death, and then gave him his blessing.
When the peasant-child sees his father dying on his fever-bed, and knows
that the question is in the heart of both parents, what is to become of
the widow and her children, he may feel his little heart bursting with
fear and sorrow, and may think that no one can be more unhappy than he.
But Louis was more unhappy. Here was his father, in the full vigour of
his years, about to die a violent death, amidst the hatred of millions
of men who, if all had done right, should have been attached to him, and
have defended his life at the peril of their own. For the peasant-child
there is comfort in prospect. His father's grave is respected in the
churchyard; the neighbours are kind; there is the consolation of work
for those who survive, and the free air, and the spring flowers, and the
mowing, and the harvest, and all the pleasures which cannot be withheld
from those who live at liberty in the country. For the princely child
there were none of these comforts. As far as he could see, his father
and mother had no friends; he and his family were in a dismal prison,
with insulting enemies about them, and no prospect of any change for the
better, when his father should have been thus violently torn away.
Never, perhaps, was there a more miserable child than Louis was now.
The queen much wished to remain with the king all night; but the king
saw that it was better that their strength should not be thus worn-out
in grief, and he said that he needed some hours of rest and stillness.
He promised that the family should come to him in the morning: and they
therefore left him at a quarter past ten, having spent an hour and
three-quarters with him. He told Clery that he never intended to keep
this promise, and should spare them and himself the affliction of such
an interview. The queen chose to put Louis to bed, as usual; but had
hardly strength to do it. She then threw herself, dressed, upon her own
bed, where the princesses heard her shivering and sobbing with cold and
grief, all night long. The whole family were dressed by six, in
expectation of being sent for by the king; and when the door opened, in
a quarter of an hour, they thought the summons was come; but it was only
an attendant, looking for a prayer-book, as a priest was going to say
mass in the king's apartment. Then they waited hour after hour, and do
not seem to have suspected that the king would not keep his promise. At
a little after ten, the firing of the artillery, and the shouts in the
streets of "Long live the Republic," told them but too plainly that all
was over.
The melancholy life they led went on through the rest of the winter and
spring with little variety. The parapet of the leads was raised, and
every chink stopped up, to prevent the family seeing anything, or being
seen when they walked; so that his daily exercise could have been but
little of an amusement to the poor boy. On the 25th of March, he was
snatched up from sleep, in the middle of the night, in order that his
bed might be searched, as it was believed that his mother and aunt
carried on a correspondence with people without, by some secret means.
Nothing was found in Louis's bed; and only a tradesman's address, and a
stick of sealing-wax, in any of the apartments. The princesses
certainly contrived to conceal some pencils; for they had some remaining
in the following October. While the king was separated from them, they
corresponded with him by putting small notes into the middle of balls of
cotton, which were found by Clery in the linen-press, occasionally, and
which would hardly have excited any suspicion if they had been seen
there by the most watchful of the gaolers. It is probable that the
princesses communicated by the same method with people out of doors,
when their linen went out or was brought in. It certainly appears that
they did carry on a correspondence by some means. No one would blame
them for this: but neither, when the situation and the fears of the new
republicans are considered, assailed and invaded as they were by the
powerful friends of royalty, can we wonder at the frequency and
strictness of their searches, while certain that their orders were
evaded by the prisoners.
On the 9th of May, poor Louis was taken ill with fever. It was a very
serious illness, and lasted nearly a month; and he never was in good
health again. The want of proper air, exercise, and play, and the dull
life he led among melancholy companions, were quite enough to destroy
the health _of any_ boy. He was tenderly nursed by his mother and aunt,
and his sister played with him; but there was no peace in their minds,
and no mirth in their faces, to cheer his young heart. One anecdote
shows how sad their manners were now. Tison's wife, who did some of the
work of their chambers, went mad, and talked to herself in a way so
ridiculous, that the Princess Royal could not help laughing. This made
the queen and Princess Elizabeth look at her with pleasure--it was so
long since they had seen her laugh! And yet this poor girl who never
laughed was then only fifteen years old, and her brother not yet nine.