MARIE ANTOINETTE.
The Convention ordained the _worship_ of Marat, and cast his corpse
to the people as an idol.
He was called Cæsar, and his funeral was modelled upon the historical
narrative of that given by Rome to the great Julius.
The body was carried by torchlight to the garden of the house in
which he made his most inflammatory speeches; and there he was buried
under trees heavily laden with countless brilliantly-illuminated
paper lamps.
His head was placed in an urn, and hung in the centre of the
Convention. His memory was decreed an altar, and at its foot his
admirers appropriately called for blood.
The enemy was now approaching on all sides, and thousands more
Royalists were in array.
Meanwhile Danton was sinking in estimation, Robespierre rising, for
Robespierre was a patient man.
Danton, dazzled with his new wife, wished to live the life of a small
country gentleman. It was too late.
Robespierre was breaking in health, but his temperance would stand
him in good stead of health for a long while. His motto was “Wait.”
The Committee of Public Safety was meanwhile reaping a rich harvest
of death.
Money was no longer to be seen.
Bread was rare.
People were dying of starvation (especially the old) in every street.
The more cruel of the Conventionists carried by acclamation these
decrees—the true legal inauguration of the Reign of Terror:
“Six thousand soldiers and twelve hundred artillerymen to do blindly
the bidding of the Committee of Public Safety.
“All men who have been in the Government occupation during the late
King’s life, to quit Paris.
“The delivery of the Revolutionary Tribunal of the Moderate
Conventionists.
“The right to search any house at any hour of the night.
“The transportation beyond the seas of every common woman in the land.
“Finally, the payment of workmen who should leave their shops to
follow up the public service.”
By these measures the mob were not only encouraged to take life, but
paid to do it. Nothing could save such a system resulting, if long
continued, in national death!
By the way, _Sunday_ was chosen as the best day for working these mob
committees.
This was followed by Merlin’s decree, which provided for the arrest
(without proof) of any suspected person, and of all those who, not
working, were enabled to live in a better condition than one of
penury. This was an attack upon all people who had hidden money. In
fact, starvation had by this time become the only mode of avoiding
the guillotine.
Prisons were not large enough to contain prisoners, and all the
confiscated churches were converted into gaols. Death was decreed for
almost every act of life—certainly for every act of pity.
A hundred men, less two, were beheaded in sixty days in Paris alone.
The Queen was too noble a victim to escape.
The Convention suddenly ordered her trial, and commanded her
separation from the two children.
Now all the lethargy which has possessed her since the King’s death
departs, and she becomes as a lioness fighting for her young.
By this time, all the beauty of Marie Antoinette had vanished, and
there remained a very broken old woman, aged about a little more
than thirty, with very scanty white hair, falling in patches from
an almost bald head. The body, as the soul, had shrunken—a skeleton
remained, covered with mere skin.
This was the Queen, who leapt into life when her dulled hearing
comprehended that she was to be separated from her children. They
had but the mercy only to remove the son.
The boy clung to his mother, who lost all dignity, dug her nails into
the child’s flesh, and called upon the men to kill them both.
For two hours this lasted, and then she became a woman again—a
mother; and dressing him to look as smart as possible, she gave him
up with her own hands to his gaoler, Simon, who took him at once to
the room where the child was destined to die. For two days and nights
the child lay upon the floor, taking neither food nor drink.
The Queen never took her son in her arms. He was to outlive her but a
little time, and then die of sheer ill-usage and neglect.
The Queen, however, still had her husband’s sister and her daughter
with her. The only consolation they had, was ascending to the
platform of their tower, to catch a glimpse of the boy on the
platform of the other tower.
Simon’s work it was to deprave the body and soul of the wretched
child. He forced him to drink strong wine, and made him answer to
the name of “Wolf.” He beat him if he wept, encouraged him to every
possible disgusting act, and compelled him to sing obscene songs,
while he (his master) smoked and drank.
Once, he nearly destroyed one of the poor Prince’s eyes; at another,
he raised a poker against him. Sometimes he was kind; and, upon one
occasion, he said, “Capet, if the soldiers come and deliver you, what
will you do?”
“Forgive you,” said the child.
The man Simon actually wept, but he cried immediately afterwards,
“There’s some of the blood of the lion in the whelp.”
In the middle of the night of the 2nd of August, the Queen was
awakened, and told she was to be removed _alone_, to another prison.
In vain the women threw themselves at the feet of the men. They had
but their duty to do.
The Queen was compelled to dress before them, while they ransacked
the room, and seized every little object the Queen still retained.
The miserable creatures left her a handkerchief.
And now, exactly as Louis XVI had told his children to forgive their
enemies, so now desolate Marie Antoinette told her daughter, in her
last words to the poor child, to forgive those who parted them.
“I give my children to you, sister. Be a second mother to them.”
For precisely as Louis appears to have had no conception of the
monstrosity of putting a woman to death, so the Queen, in leaving the
Temple, appears not to have supposed for one moment that the Princess
Elizabeth would be claimed by the scaffold,—she who had led the life
of a true woman, who had nursed and helped the people, and never
joined in the frivolities of the Court.
The Queen was taken to the prison of the Conciergerie, which is
composed of the dungeons below high water mark, to be found amongst
the foundations of the Palace of Justice.
To a wretched cell, having in one corner a straw bed, and by the
light of one candle, was the ex-Queen taken.
A woman desirous of death in the dungeon of a stronghold, and yet
they only believed her safe when two soldiers, swords drawn, stood at
the outer door watching, with orders not to lose sight of the Widow
Capet, even when asleep.
Madam Richard, that good woman who tended Charlotte Corday in her
last moments, was the Queen’s most humane gaoler. She found something
like furniture for the cell, procured wholesome food for the captive,
and often brought a low-whispered message from the royal prisoners
still in the Temple.
A little while, and the dampness of the cell rotted the Queen’s only
dresses—two very common ones; and her underclothing becoming in
tatters, she was half naked.