:)■! = 
 
 'iliH;:": 
 
 
 
 '/ ' ' ' » I ' > •' 1 » J ' . I ■ 
 
 .■I' 
 
> o^ - 
 
 ,<^o^ 
 
 
 
 56 ^ 
 
 
 "<> <^ 
 
 
 ^^0^ 
 
 ,iso. 
 
 ^ °^ ° 
 
 
 
 "%.o^ 
 
 
 <."'»*^' 
 
 
 Or '^ 
 
 
 ^cP<^ 
 
 %.^^ 
 
 ^ ° 
 
 ,^^ 
 
 
 
 j5 Q. 
 
 
 
 
 ^^0^ 
 
 ./ 
 
 ^^"^^..^^ /isa^\.^^' ;m\""-^^^^ «^^^^-^^^' """' 
 
 ^ o^ 
 
 
.N*^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i^^ -^ %- 
 
 
 \> 
 
 
 
 ^^ :^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^aO^ 
 
 
 
 . -%. V ^^ -0/ -% "•»"■ \> „ 
 
 
 ^ "/TTT- A<^ <- " 
 
 
 .^' ^^. 
 
 ^^^ ^^ '% 
 
 -^^d* 
 
 7!!T^ ao"^ <- "'VvT'^ a*^ <*"'77T^ a^^ 
 
 ' o , . ^ \^^ 9), ' " . ^ "" A^ 9>, ^ o , X ■» nV^ 95^ ^ , V - V 
 
 
 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 OF 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
This edition, printed on hand-made linen 
 paper, is limited to 48^ numbered copies. 
 
 No...i^/d, 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 OF 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 ^n 3^istorical ^Jtetrij* 
 
 By lord RONALD GOWER. 
 
 fo7^ 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1886. 
 
" Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity, 
 No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me — 
 Almost no grave allowed me; like the lily, 
 That once was mistress of the field and flourished, 
 I '11 hang my head and perish." 
 
 
 <>"Gc 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7i>/ 
 
 " I ""HERE is nothing new relating to the last 
 days of Marie Antoinette in the fol- 
 lowing sketch. At one time I had intended 
 writing the whole story of her life; but this 
 I have relinquished. 
 
 The Queen's life becomes chiefly interest- 
 ing as it approaches its end, and is chiefly 
 remarkable by showing how a woman, whose 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 early years were trifled thoughtlessly away, 
 and who in later life — most unfortunately for 
 her family, herself, and her adopted country — 
 mixed herself in politics, where women are 
 ever mischievous, was raised through suffer- 
 ing to an heroic level. 
 
 As the clouds of adversity gathered around, 
 Marie Antoinette displayed a patience and 
 a courage in unparalleled sufferings such as 
 few saints and martyrs have equalled. 
 
 The pure ore of her nature was but hid- 
 den under the dross of worldliness : and the 
 scorching fire of suffering revealed one of 
 the tenderest hearts and one of the bravest 
 natures that history records. To this is 
 owing, I believe, the universal interest felt 
 in her life and in her misfortunes. 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 Among a crowd of others, my authorities 
 for the following pages have been Campar- 
 don's " Marie Antoinette a la Conciergerie " 
 and Saint Amand's work on the same sub- 
 ject. 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 OF 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 /^N the 2d of August, 1793, the widow 
 of Louis XVI., Queen of France and 
 Navarre, and Archduchess of Austria, the 
 once brilliant sovereign of Versailles, now a 
 prisoner, torn from her children and treated 
 like a common felon, was removed from the 
 prison of the Temple to that of the Concier- 
 gerie, there to linger until her release from 
 human barbarity on the i6th of October. 
 
lO LAST DA YS OF 
 
 I propose writing an account of those last 
 seventy-six days of a life once so bright, now 
 brought to the lowest depth of moral and 
 physical suffering. 
 
 The Conciergerie is one of the most curious 
 and interesting monuments of ancient Paris. 
 A fortress in the days of Eude, Count of Paris, 
 who here defied the Normans, it was enlarged 
 by Robert the Pious, and from his time to 
 that of Charles the Wise was the principal 
 dwelling-place of the French kings. Later 
 occupied by the Parliament, it became trans- 
 formed into a State prison, although a portion 
 of the building was still reserved for the use 
 of the Parliament, the State Exchequer, and 
 other judiciary bodies. 
 
 Its splendid groined stone hall, recently 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. II 
 
 restored, dates from the reign of St. Louis, 
 as does also the adjoining Sainte Chapelle, 
 one of the gems of mediaeval ecclesiastical 
 architecture, which in our days almost mira- 
 culously escaped uninjured the petroleum-fed 
 flames of the Commune, which destroyed a 
 portion of the prison. 
 
 In one of the vast halls of this building, 
 when occupied by the Parliament, Louis XIV. 
 entered during a sitting, booted and spurred, 
 and declared that he was the State; and in 
 this same hall, in 1793, on the loth of March, 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal held its first sit- 
 ting. It was a strange fate that this building, 
 once the dwelling-place of the sovereigns of 
 the House of Capet, when holding their state 
 in the capital, should see a captive within 
 
12 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 its walls the widow of their descendant, — the 
 " widow Capet," as the Jacobins described her 
 in their blood-stained edicts. 
 
 One can form no idea by seeing the Con- 
 ciergerie — even that portion of it where pris- 
 oners are still kept — in its present trim and 
 well-kept state, of the appearance of the build- 
 ing during the Revolution. 
 
 Beugnot has given us his experiences of it 
 in his Memoirs. " The staircases," he writes, 
 " of the palace (prison) were crowded with 
 women, who appear to be waiting there for 
 some attractive show. The show was always 
 ready at hand in the cart that waited to 
 carry away the unfortunate victims to the 
 guillotine. When I arrived, all these people 
 rose together as in an amphitheatre, yelling 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 3 
 
 with savage delight, showing the most fiend- 
 ish joy at every fresh arrival. In that short 
 space which I had to pass in order to enter 
 the prison, I received such a welcome that 
 I could judge of the reception that awaited 
 me when I should have to leave." 
 
 Beugnot thus describes what a night passed 
 in the Conciergerie was like, and one may 
 believe him when he says that those who 
 have not passed through such an ordeal can- 
 not know its terror. 
 
 " From hour to hour the chimes beat slowly 
 out these long hours of suffering ; the watch- 
 dogs respond with long-drawn-out howls ; 
 the jailers charged with the different death- 
 warrants {actes (T accusatiofi) take these from 
 cell to cell till far into the night, and awake 
 
14 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 every prisoner by their menacing and insult- 
 ing voices. Every one believes that his last 
 hour has arrived; thus these death-sentences, 
 destined for from sixty to eighty people daily, 
 are so distributed that six hundred are kept 
 in perpetual alarm." 
 
 Another writer, M. de Beaulieu, has also 
 written of his experiences in this prison. 
 
 He says that when the river rises, the lower 
 portion of the prison gets flooded, and that 
 the whole place soaks with damp. The water 
 runs down the walls ; the air is almost un- 
 breathable, so tainted is it with the horrible 
 emanations that come from the miserable 
 crowds of prisoners huddled together. " It 
 seemed," he adds, " as if the most pestilen- 
 tial of all the prisons had been purposely 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 15 
 
 selected for that of the Queen." To such 
 a place and to such a situation had been 
 brought one who formerly reigned at Ver- 
 sailles, at Fontainebleau, at Compiegne and 
 St. Cloud. 
 
 But as Marie Antoinette enters this dismal 
 place, and till she leaves it for the scaffold, 
 she is, " although unqueened, yet like a queen 
 and daughter to a king." 
 
 Her appearance at this time one can 
 gather from the portrait by Kocharsko, of 
 which there are several repetitions. The origi- 
 nal I believe to be the one in the collec- 
 tion of the Prince d'Aremberg at Brussels. A 
 photograph of this portrait appears at the 
 commencement of these notes. 
 
 The face is still " majestic though in ruin," 
 
1 6 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 and shows the almost haughty mien which 
 never quite left the daughter of the Caesars ; 
 the proud arch of the eyebrow, the aquiline 
 nose, and the marked prominence of the lower 
 lip, that conspicuous feature in all the House 
 of Hapsburg. Over her fast whitening hair 
 the Queen wears the common widow's cap 
 of that day, what we call a mob-cap, with its 
 black ribbon tied in a loose knot below the 
 kerchief, which, kept by a single pin, crosses 
 her chest and shoulders. There is no more 
 pathetic portrait than this. 
 
 The Polish artist may have made a sketch 
 for this likeness while — as he is tradition- 
 ally said to have been — employed about the 
 Queen as one of the gendarmes set to watch 
 her ; but, as the evidence in Michonis' case 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 7 
 
 proves, an artist was introduced into the 
 Queen's prison. At any rate, it was painted 
 by one who had opportunity of not only 
 studying the Queen's features, but of por- 
 traying her expression, — features and ex- 
 pression which neither imprisonment nor 
 suffering could degrade or alter. 
 
 On the I St of August the Convention regis- 
 tered an order that " Marie Antoinette be sent 
 to the Revolutionary Tribunal. She will be im- 
 mediately transferred to the Conciergerie." 
 
 On the night following, or rather in the 
 early morning of the following day, the Queen, 
 who was still with her dauditer Madame 
 Royale, and her sister-in-law Madam. e Eliza- 
 beth, in the Temple, was awoke by the com- 
 missioners at two in the morning. 
 
LAST DAYS OF 
 
 In her short account of the days of her im- 
 prisonment Madame Royale writes as follows : 
 " My mother listened to the reading of the 
 order for her removal without saying one 
 word, nor did she display any emotion. My 
 aunt and I begged to be allowed to accom- 
 pany her, but were refused this privilege. 
 While she made up a packet of her clothes, 
 the municipal guards kept close beside her, nor 
 would allow her- even to change her dress 
 in private. They ordered her to empty out 
 her pockets, searched her, and took away all 
 that she had in them, although there was 
 nothing of any consequence to take. They 
 made a parcel of the things they found, 
 which they said would be sent to the Re- 
 volutionary Tribunal." 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 19 
 
 What they took from the Queen was a 
 small packet in which were some of her hus- 
 band's and children's hair, a little register 
 on which she taught her son arithmetic, a 
 pocket-book in which she had written the 
 address of her children's doctor, miniatures of 
 Madame de Lamballe and two old friends 
 of her youth, the Princesses of Hesse and 
 of Mecklenburg, and two printed prayers. 
 These commissioners were good enough to 
 allow the Queen to keep her handkerchief, 
 and also her smelling-bottle. After taking 
 a tender farewell of her daughter, and tell- 
 ing her to regard Madame Elizabeth as a 
 second mother, and after a few whispered 
 words to the latter, the Queen tore herself 
 from the room, " without again looking at 
 
20 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 US," adds her daughter, " for fear of losing 
 her self-control." 
 
 At the foot of the staircase of the tower 
 she had to wait while the municipal guards 
 made out a proces-verbal of her discharge from 
 the Temple. In going out, she struck her 
 head against the upper part of the door, 
 not seeing how low it was. On being asked 
 if she had hurt herself, she answered, " No ; 
 nothing can hurt me now." 
 
 Madame Royale was not an authoress, 
 but perhaps the very simplicity of her narra- 
 tive, the uncoloured description of this scene, 
 in which the long agony of the Queen may 
 be said to commence, is more touching than 
 had she written of it at greater length and 
 with more effusion. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 21 
 
 He who can read the daughter's account of 
 this supreme parting and not feel touched at 
 it, must have something very hard in the 
 place where his heart should be. 
 
 Outside the gate of the Temple a closed car- 
 riage was waiting, which the Queen entered, 
 accompanied by Michonis, one of the muni- 
 cipals, and two gendarmes. It was three 
 o'clock in the morning when the carriage 
 drew up at the gate of the Queen's new 
 prison. 
 
 Within the Conciergerie the wife of the 
 jailer, Richard, and her servant were sitting 
 up, expecting the arrival of the Queen : Ma- 
 dame Richard's, and especially Rosalie Lamor- 
 liere's, names should be remembered, as from 
 them the last acts of kindness and sympathy 
 
22 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 were shown to one whom the whole world 
 seemed to have deserted. 
 
 During the first portion of her imprison- 
 ment in the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette 
 occupied a room called the Chamber of the 
 Council, where, before the Revolution, the 
 magistrates were wont to meet on certain 
 days of the year to hear the complaints of 
 the prisoners. This room had lately been 
 tenanted by General de Custines. The 
 Queen found a number of gendarmes drawn 
 up at the door of her new prison, and within 
 several of the Revolutionary Tribunal were 
 gathered to see their new victim. The cere- 
 mony of the prisoner's registration having 
 been finished, these left, leaving the Queen 
 alone with Madame Richard and Rosalie. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 23 
 
 The latter has left a record of the Queen's 
 imprisonment, which has been considered 
 truthful by all those who have written on 
 the subject. At first, says Rosalie, the Queen 
 seemed surprised at the bareness of her new 
 prison. She was suffering much from the 
 heat, her face bathed with perspiration. 
 
 After hanging up her watch on a nail in 
 the wall, she commenced to take off her 
 things. Rosalie, who offered to assist her, was 
 thanked by the Queen, who said to her that 
 since she had been in prison she was used to 
 do for herself. Her manner, Rosalie adds, 
 was completely simple and kind. 
 
 Just outside the Queen's prison was a wine- 
 shop, to which the prisoners flocked, shouting 
 their ribald songs within a few feet of where 
 
24 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 the Queen was obliged to sit during those 
 long August days. She was in the worst quar- 
 ter of the Conciergerie, where the lowest scum 
 of the non-political prisoners are kept. She was 
 not even allowed the dignity of solitude in her 
 confinement, and was obliged to be within ear- 
 shot of the profanities and obscenities of the 
 lowest rabble in the world. Two gendarmes 
 occupied a portion of the room, and an old 
 woman of eighty was placed near her. She 
 helped her to patch up her scanty wardrobe ; 
 but she was soon replaced by another woman, 
 named Harel, whom the Queen suspected of 
 being a spy, and to whom, in consequence, 
 she hardly ever spoke. The night of her 
 arrival at the Conciergerie the Queen had 
 not so much as a change of linen. For days 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 25 
 
 she begged to be allowed some, but it was 
 not until the tenth day that her prayer 
 was granted, when Michonis went to the 
 Temple and brought back with him a parcel 
 of linen and some clothes ; among others, a 
 white gown, which the Queen wore on the 
 day of her execution. On seeing the care 
 with which these clothes had been selected, 
 the Queen said to Rosalie that she knew she 
 owed them to " my poor sister Elizabeth." 
 
 De Beaulieu, whom we have already quoted, 
 writes thus : " Among the prisoners was a con- 
 vict of the name of Barrasin, a most forbid- 
 ding-looking fellow, who helped to make up 
 the Queen's prison." Knowing this, Beaulieu 
 inquired of him how the Queen was treated. 
 " Like any one else," was the answer ; and on 
 
26 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 his asking Barrasin how the Queen passed her 
 time, " Oh, the Capet mends her stockings." 
 
 " What sort of a bed has she got ? " 
 
 " A straw mattress, Hke your own," said 
 the convict. 
 
 " How is she dressed ? " 
 
 " She wears a black gown, which is all torn 
 and in holes, and she looks in it like une 
 Margotr 
 
 Little by little everything was taken from the 
 poor Queen. The souvenirs of her happy past 
 life, to which she clung, being all that were left 
 her of former days, were ruthlessly taken ; first 
 her watch, a gift of her mother, and which 
 had never left her since she left Vienna, — the 
 watch which had counted the happy hours of 
 her youth and womanhood was taken from 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 2*J 
 
 her. She wept bitterly, Rosalie says, at having 
 to part with it, as if it had been a friend. 
 
 In the diary of Marie Antoinette's daughter, 
 Madame Royale, she mentions that her mother 
 was accustomed to drink only water, not that 
 of the Seine, which made her ill, but from the 
 Ville d'Avray. She had obtained it daily at 
 the Temple, but it was not allowed her in the 
 Conciergerie. 
 
 The Queen sent to get her knitting {tricot) 
 from the Temple, where she had been making 
 a pair of socks for the Dauphin, or, as they 
 called him now, Louis XVII. " We sent," 
 writes the Princess, " everything we could find 
 in the shape of cotton and worsted, knowing 
 how fond my mother was of all kinds of work. 
 Formerly she was always so engaged, except 
 
28 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 when obliged to hold her court {aux keures 
 de representation). She had worked an im- 
 mense quantity of tapestry for furniture, and 
 had even made a carpet." 
 
 So she and Madame Elizabeth packed up 
 all these things, fondly hoping they would be 
 given the Queen. But she was not allowed 
 any of them, " for fear," adds the Princess, 
 " that she would injure herself with the 
 needles." 
 
 Unable to obtain her work-things and 
 without any knitting-needles, Marie Antoinette, 
 according to Rosalie, managed to pick out 
 some threads from an old piece of wall covering, 
 which oddly enough was ornamented with the 
 royal badge of the fleur-de-lys, and with these 
 threads and a pair of toothpicks for needles, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 29 
 
 and resting the work on her knee as a work- 
 frame, was enabled to make some garters. On 
 arriving at the Conciergerie the Queen had 
 but one cap, and this in daily use began to get 
 shabby. Madame Richard was, however, able 
 to get her another. " I have nothing worth 
 giving her," she said one day to Rosalie, " but 
 take this," giving Rosalie a piece of lawn that 
 she found she could spare from one of those 
 poor widow's head-dresses. 
 
 One day, kindly intending, Madame Richard 
 brought into the Queen's prison her youngest 
 child, a chubby pretty boy of about eight years 
 old, — the Dauphin's age. The Queen took him 
 in her arms and burst into bitter tears. Her 
 poor boy was never out of the Queen's mind 
 night or day. Of all her many tortures, that 
 
30 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 of knowing that he was ill-treated and in the 
 wretch Simon's hands was the most fearful. 
 
 More than one attempt had been made 
 to induce the Queen to escape from the 
 Temple ; but as long as the King, and, after 
 the King's death, her children remained with 
 her, she always refused to leave them. But 
 now, alone, and with the shadow of the 
 guillotine creeping ever nearer, the solitary 
 Queen appears to have been willing to 
 escape. A determined attempt was made at 
 the beginning of September to get her out 
 of the Conciergerie ; an attempt only resulting 
 in failure. From a clove having been employed 
 in this conspiracy, it is known as that of the 
 clove-pink, — " La conspiration de I'oeillet." 
 The following is a translation of the proces- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 31 
 
 verbal, taken from M. Campardon's work, 
 " Marie Antoinette a la Conciergerie : " — 
 
 "No. I. — Report made by the Citizen Gil- 
 bert, gendarme of the widow Capet. 
 Dedicated to Citizen Demesnil, Lieu- 
 tenant-Colonel of the Gendarmerie, 3d 
 September, 1793. 
 
 " In my difficult position, I should be 
 wanting in my duty in not informing you 
 of the risk run by introducing near the 
 widow Capet suspicious people ; and in order 
 that I and my companions should not be 
 compromised, the following statement is the 
 truth relating to this affair. The last time 
 but one that the Citizen Michonis came, he 
 brought with him an individual, at seeing 
 
32 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 whom the widow Capet was visibly agitated. 
 She declared him to be a ci-devant knight 
 of St. Louis, and that she trembled lest he 
 should be discovered. She also said that 
 he had given her a pink containing a note, 
 and that he would return on the following 
 Friday. Also, that while the maid of the 
 widow Capet was playing with me at cards, 
 she pricked a note with a pin, which she 
 bade me give to the knight of St. Louis. 
 Not wishing to have to reproach myself or 
 neglect my duties, I took it at once to the 
 jailer, to whose wife I gave the paper, and 
 made the same reports as here stated." 
 
 On the strength of this denunciation the 
 Queen underwent an examination by some 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 33 
 
 members of the Revolutionary Tribunal on the 
 3d of September. This examination began 
 with the following questions and replies : — 
 
 Q. Are you the person who is called the 
 widow Capet ? 
 
 A. I am. 
 
 Q. Do you see any one where you are 
 placed ? 
 
 A. Only those people who are placed 
 about me, and the officials who have come 
 with persons whom I do not know. 
 
 Q. Have you not seen lately a ci-devant 
 knight of St. Louis.? 
 
 A. It is possible, so many persons come. 
 
 Q. Do you not know the names of some 
 
 of those who have come with the officials? 
 
 3 
 
34 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 A. I do not remember the names of any. 
 
 Q. Among those who have come into your 
 room, did you not recognise any one? 
 
 A. No. 
 
 Q. Did not some one recognise you lately ? 
 
 A. I cannot remember. 
 
 Q. Did not a man give you a pink } 
 
 A. There are some of those flowers in my 
 room. 
 
 Q. Did you not receive a letter? 
 
 A. How could I receive one with the 
 people in the room, and the woman who 
 always watches from the window? 
 
 Q. Would it not have been possible to have 
 given you a pink containing a letter? 
 
 A. I doubt it, as the woman would have 
 noticed it, and she said nothing. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 35 
 
 Q. Have you not written anything lately? 
 A. I have no materials for writing. 
 
 And so on for many pages. But the fact 
 was, the poor Queen had not only received a 
 letter, but had also answered it by pricking 
 some words with a pin or needle on a small 
 strip of paper. She can hardly be blamed for 
 denying a fact which, were it revealed — and she 
 knew not of Gilbert's having denounced her — 
 would not only condemn her, but the devoted 
 man who had attempted her deliverance, and of 
 whose safety she could not then have known. 
 
 Although De Rougeville escaped the guillo- 
 tine, he fell under the bullets of the Bonapart- 
 ists in 1 8 14, having been convicted of another 
 Legitimist plot. 
 
36 LAST BAYS OF 
 
 Alexandre Dumas has, in one of his most 
 stirring romances, celebrated De Rougeville's 
 courage, but has changed that name to that 
 of the Chevalier de la Maison Rouge. 
 
 Towards the close of her examination, the 
 Queen, who seems to have regained her 
 lofty spirit, on being asked whether she was 
 not interested in the success of the ene- 
 my's armies, replied, " I interest myself in 
 the success of those of my son's nation ; 
 when one is a mother, that is the dearest 
 interest." 
 
 Being asked what was her son's nationality, 
 she replied, " Can you doubt it ? Is he not 
 French?" 
 
 " Your son," they argued, " being only a 
 private individual, has been obliged to relin- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 37 
 
 quish all the vain prerogatives that formerly 
 were attached to the title of kins:." 
 
 " There is no prouder one," the Queen 
 answered, " than that of desiring the happiness 
 of France." 
 
 " Then you are doubtless much pleased that 
 neither kings nor royalty now exist." 
 
 "All that we wish," she replied to this 
 sneer, " is that France should be great and 
 happy." 
 
 When asked if she agreed with the opinions 
 of her husband, she said with firmness, " Yes. 
 I have always fulfilled my duty. If," she 
 added, " France is to be happy with a king, 
 then I desire it should be so with my son ; 
 and I regard those mine enemies who wish 
 evil to my children." 
 
38 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 Interrogations followed. Marie Bault, who 
 had waited on the Queen, denied that the 
 stranger (De Rougeville) had offered a flower 
 or spoken to the Queen; nor had she 
 seen her write with a needle or otherwise. 
 Michonis (the municipal guard) also underwent 
 an examination; but little came of it. He was, 
 however, imprisoned on suspicion, and on 
 the 23d of May, 1794, executed with fifty-four 
 others, including Cecile Renault, suspected of 
 intending to assassinate Robespierre. An allu- 
 sion is made to Michonis having introduced 
 a painter into the Queen's presence; this was 
 doubtless Kocharsko, whose portrait of the 
 Queen has been already referred to. Gilbert, 
 the gendarme who had betrayed the unfor- 
 tunate confidence the Queen had placed in 
 
 m 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 39 
 
 him, gave evidence to the same effect as 
 that in his letter. He added to this the 
 extraordinary statement, which he asserted 
 the Queen had made him, that she not only 
 showed him the answer to De Rousfeville's 
 note, but the paper on which she had 
 pricked the answer. " You see," he said the 
 Queen remarked, " I can write without a 
 pen ! " Always imprudent, the unfortunate 
 Queen seems to have quite forgotten the 
 extreme peril of taking such a man as 
 this gendarme appears to have been into 
 her confidence ; she suffered terribly for 
 this, as she had done for all her other 
 imprudences. Others were examined, but 
 nothing could be proved as long as the 
 principal agent, De Rougeville, was at liberty. 
 
40 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 and, fortunately for him, he managed to 
 elude all pursuit. Whether or not it was 
 owing to being aware of this, on her second 
 examination by the commissioners the Queen 
 acknowledged having received a letter. On 
 being asked what that note contained, she 
 said, " Only a few vague sentences. ' What 
 do you intend doing ? I have escaped from 
 prison miraculously. I will come on Friday.'" 
 There was also an offer of money in it, 
 and she added that she had no intention 
 of accepting any. On being pressed to tell 
 what she had written on the slip of paper 
 with the needle, she said, " I tried to mark, 
 ' I am closely watched. I do not speak or 
 write.' " On being shown the paper, she 
 recognised it. They asked what had passed 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 4 1 
 
 between her and De Rougeville. " He asked 
 me," she replied, " if my heart failed me ; 
 and I said, ' It never fails me, but it is pro- 
 foundly afflicted.' " In an interesting little 
 book by the Comte de Reiset, " Lettres 
 inedites de Marie Antoinette," a reproduc- 
 tion of the Queen's needle-pricked note is 
 given. It reads thus : " Je me fie a vous, 
 je viendrai," after the line to which she 
 confessed having written to the commis- 
 sioners. 
 
 How and in what manner De Rougeville 
 intended releasing the Queen from the Con- 
 ciergerie will never be known. There are 
 various suppositions, — one, the least improba- 
 ble, being that, having gained over Michonis 
 and the gendarmes, he would be enabled, by 
 
42 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 a forged order from the Municipality instruct- 
 ing Michonis to take the Queen back to 
 the Temple, to put her in a carriage, in 
 which, protected by a mounted body of 
 Royalists, they would make their way to the 
 frontier. 
 
 Alluding to this attempt, Madame Royale 
 writes, in her account of her family's imprison- 
 ment, that she had learnt since the death 
 of the Queen that attempts had been made 
 to get her out of the Conciergerie. " I 
 have been assured," writes the Princess, 
 "that the gendarmes who watched her and 
 the wife of the doorkeeper had been gained 
 over by some of our friends ; that she had 
 seen several people devoted to her in her 
 prison, amongst others a priest, who had 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 43 
 
 administered the sacraments to her, which 
 she had received with deep piety. The 
 chance of escape was missed on one occa- 
 sion, as she had been told to speak to the 
 second guard, and by mistake she spoke 
 to the first. Another time, she had got 
 out of the room, and had already passed 
 through the corridor, when she was stopped 
 by a gendarme, and obliged to return to 
 her room, although he had been gained 
 over. A great many persons were interested 
 in my mother's fate ; and indeed, except the 
 vilest, of whom also there were many, it 
 was impossible to be with her for however 
 short a time without being filled for her 
 with respect, so much goodness was mixed 
 with the dignity of her manner. At the 
 
44 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 time these things happened we knew no 
 details, but we only heard that my mother 
 had seen a knight of St. Louis, who had 
 given her a pink which contained a note." 
 
 In the Baron de Klinckowstoem's work, 
 " Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France," 
 this affair is told as follows : — 
 
 De Rougeville knew Madame Dutilleul, an 
 American (this must be an error on Fersen's 
 part, as Madame Dutilleul's maiden name was 
 Sophie Lebon, a native of Paris), and they 
 formed a project to save the Queen. They 
 gained over Fontanis, an honest man, a timber 
 merchant, and Michonis. Michonis would not 
 accept any money, but paid the others. One 
 day De Rougeville accompanied Michonis to 
 the prison. The Queen rose and said, " Oh, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 45 
 
 it is you, Monsieur Michonis," and on seeing 
 M. de Rougeville became greatly agitated, 
 and almost fainted, which surprised the gen- 
 darmes. He made a sign to her to reassure 
 herself, and told her to take some pinks, 
 where a letter was concealed. She did not 
 dare to do so, and he dropt them. The 
 Queen then sent for Michonis, and while 
 he spoke to the gendarmes, she said to De 
 Rougeville that he was running too much 
 risk, and he said that she should be saved, 
 and that he would bring her money to gain 
 over the gendarmes. She then said to him, 
 " If I appear weak and broken, this," placing 
 her hand on her heart, "is not so." She 
 asked him whether her trial would soon come 
 on. He reassured her. She said to him, " Look 
 
46 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 at me and at my bed, and tell my relations 
 and my friends, if you can escape, the con- 
 dition you have seen me in." They then left. 
 The doorkeeper and his wife had been gained. 
 The plan was that Michonis, who had brought 
 the Queen from the Temple to the Conciergerie, 
 should go at night at ten o'clock, and remove 
 the Queen by order of the Municipality to the 
 Temple, as it were, and thus get her away. 
 But one of the gendarmes, who apparently 
 had not been gained, opposed her, and pre- 
 vented the Queen from leaving the prison. 
 And so ended this disastrous attempt. Its 
 only consequence was to hasten her trial, and 
 to enhance the horrors of her confinement by 
 removing her to a far worse dungeon than 
 the prison in which she had passed the first 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 47 
 
 month of her imprisonment. All, even the 
 devotion of her friends, seemed but to con- 
 spire to add greater sufferings to the unfor- 
 tunate Queen. 
 
 On the nth of September, Marie Antoi- 
 nette was transferred from the prison-room she 
 had occupied since the 2d of August into 
 the dark and narrow underground cell still 
 shown to visitors interested in her tragic life. 
 But there have been many alterations made 
 there since the days of the Terror. 
 
 Passing through the courtyard of the Con- 
 ciergerie, a vast hall is entered, lately restored ; 
 this the body-guard of St. Louis are said to 
 have occupied. At the end of this vaulted 
 hall, on the left, some steps are descended ; 
 turning to the right, a dark passage is 
 
48 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 reached ; at the end of this, on the left, is the 
 room occupied by the gendarmes during the 
 imprisonment of the Queen — now transformed 
 into a bathroom for the use of prisoners — and 
 next to it is the Queen's prison. The opening 
 between these two rooms has been closed. 
 A heavily barred door, by which the Queen's 
 prison is now entered, is not in its original 
 position, as it formerly was in the room of 
 the gendarmes ; now, as has already been said, 
 it is in the prison bathroom. 
 
 Formerly there was no ingress to the 
 Queen's cell but through this room, the 
 doorway, where it now is, having been walled 
 up. The window has also been altered, 
 having been enlarged in the reign of Louis 
 XVIII. The pictures, mere daubs, that now 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 49 
 
 hang on the prison-wall, one representing 
 the separation of the Royal Family on the 
 eve of the King's execution, the other the 
 Queen taking the sacrament in prison — an 
 occurrence which probably did not take place 
 — date also from that reign. The crucifix is 
 said to have belonged to the Queen ; but 
 this, too, is improbable, as, had she pos- 
 sessed one, it would have undoubtedly been 
 taken from her. This is placed on the wall 
 above a tablet and an altar ; these also date 
 from the Restoration. The only portions of 
 this cell that exist now as when the Queen 
 was confined in it are the bricks with which 
 the floor is tiled, the ceiling, and the walls. 
 
 The opening communicating with the ad- 
 joining prison, in which Robespierre is sup- 
 
 4 
 
50 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 posed to have passed a few hours before his 
 execution, has also been made since th©', time 
 of the Queen's imprisonment ; it is now used 
 as the Sacristy of the Chapel. A large vaulted 
 chamber beyond, famous as being the room 
 in which the Girondins passed their last night 
 together, is now the Chapel, and Mass is 
 celebrated weekly here before the prisoners. 
 
 Nothing much more gloomy or wretched 
 than this new place of captivity into which 
 the Queen was placed can well be imagined ; 
 but in order to render it still more so, the 
 Queen's jailers had the heavily barred win- 
 dow, by which some light struggled into the 
 cell from the courtyard outside, where the 
 female prisoners came to wash their linen, 
 covered half way up with a screen of sheet 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 5 1 
 
 iron, and the upper portion wired over. The 
 prison measured seven feet in depth by six- 
 teen in length ; but the Queen was only- 
 allowed a portion of this space. The furni- 
 ture of the prison consisted of a little truckle- 
 bed, a washhand basin, a caned chair, a little 
 wooden table, with a stool of coarse woollen 
 work, and two of the chairs used in the prison. 
 This, and a paper box in which the Queen 
 kept her dresses, her caps, her kerchiefs, 
 and her linen, was all that the little maid 
 could procure for her ; but that little was 
 as gratefully received by the prisoner as if 
 it had been of much value. Up to this 
 time the Queen appears still to have had 
 some faint hopes of her life being spared, 
 probably as that of a hostage ; and accord- 
 
52 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 ing to Rosalie Lamorliere, she had said to 
 her that if she were to leave the Conciergerie, 
 she would take her with her as her maid. 
 
 But after the affair of the pink and the 
 change to so infinitely worse a prison, and 
 the rigorous watch now set over her, Marie 
 Antoinette's heart must have failed within her 
 as far as any earthly hope was concerned; 
 but her unshakeable courage, as she had 
 said to De Rougeville, never failed ; and al- 
 though the accumulated sufferings and priva- 
 tions that were now added to her mental 
 tortures daily increased, she never showed 
 anything but a patience that, if it had not 
 been supported by something unearthly, would 
 be unaccountable. 
 
 It must not be lost sight of that the Queen 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 53 
 
 was naturally of an imperious and somewhat 
 easily roused temper, and this was one of 
 the many causes that made her unpopular 
 even in her bright days, although no one 
 was sooner appeased, or more anxious to 
 atone for any hasty word that might have 
 fallen from her. The Prince de Ligne, in an 
 unpublished account of the Queen, gives the 
 following little anecdote to prove this trait in 
 her character. 
 
 One day, wanting some article of dress or 
 toilette, she rang for her attendants, and on 
 their not being able to find what the Queen 
 wanted, she said pettishly, " How terrible it is 
 not to be able to find what one wants I " And 
 on the Prince de Ligne remarking that she 
 seemed much annoyed about such a trifle and 
 
54 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 angry at so small a cause, she summoned 
 her maids, and on their appearance said, in 
 order to make up for her former petulance, 
 " You see how well I am served ; they have 
 all come together;" much to the delight of 
 them all. 
 
 A trifling incident, but it shows the char- 
 acter of Marie Antoinette, and it is therefore 
 worth recording. But now, in these last 
 days of her life, when surrounded by every 
 aggravation that could wound a proud spirit, 
 treated like the worst of offenders, insulted 
 as mother, wife, queen, and woman, she never 
 seems to have as much as said one word 
 that could be construed into petulance, or 
 given one angry look. 
 
 As her sufferings increased, so did her 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 55 
 
 patience ; and if she had committed impru- 
 dences and faults, these were a thousand-fold 
 atoned for by a constancy in trial that is not 
 easy to match out of Divine Writ. 
 
 For the details of her last days on earth, one 
 is obliged to trust the accounts left us by her 
 jailers or their relatives. What seems to me 
 somewhat suspicious in these memoirs is that 
 they are far too well composed to have been 
 written by those whose names they bear. 
 Doubtless Rosalie Lamorliere and Madame 
 Bault were kind-hearted and sympathetic crea- 
 tures, but it is scarcely probable that they 
 should have written high-flowing accounts of 
 their prisoner, compared to which the diary of 
 the Queen's daughter's imprisonment by herself 
 reads as the writing of a schoolgirl, but is all 
 
56 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 the more to be trusted for its very simplicity. 
 Probably, as has often happened with the 
 memoirs of Rosalie and the others relating 
 to the Queen's last days, some author of the 
 day got hold of the rough account written 
 by them of the Queen's imprisonment, or 
 got the details by word of mouth, and then 
 polishing the account, gave it its present 
 shape. The wife of the new jailer that 
 guarded the Queen in her new prison — Dame 
 Bault — has left an account of these days, 
 named " Recit exact des derniers moments de 
 la captivite de la Reine, depuis la ii Sep- 
 tembre 1793 jusqu'au 16 Octobre. By the 
 Dame Bault, widow of her last porter." 
 
 But whether this memoir is strictly accu- 
 rate or not, it is the only one that gives any 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 57 
 
 details of the last days of the Queen's life, and 
 has been trusted as an authority by all the 
 French authors who have written of that time. 
 Bault — or Le Beau, as Rosalie writes it — the 
 Queen's new jailer, was informed by the Tri- 
 bunal that his head would be forfeited if the 
 Queen escaped; so it is not to be wondered 
 at that, although he seems to have sympa- 
 thised with the captive, his watch over her 
 was a rigorous one. No more flowers, of which 
 the Queen was always passionately fond, were 
 now allowed to be introduced into her cell — 
 flowers, that, of all the beautiful things of Na- 
 ture, had alone given a little charm and solace 
 to the prisoner. Even her rings were taken 
 from her — her wedding-ring and two set with 
 diamonds, which Rosalie observed she used to 
 
58 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 change from one hand to the other — those 
 hands still so white and beautiful. Marie An- 
 toinette, who, even when at Versailles, hated 
 having nothing to occupy herself with, and dis- 
 liked the tedious court ceremonies for debar- 
 ring her from her music, her books, and her 
 embroidery, was now reduced to work a kind 
 of garter with threads taken from her bedding, 
 and not being allowed any knitting-needles, 
 used a pair of toothpicks. When finished, the 
 Queen dropped this garter with a significant 
 look when Bault entered the prison. It reached 
 — thanks to one of her loyalest followers, Mons. 
 Hue, a faithful servant of Louis XVI. — its des- 
 tination, for he gave it to the Queen's daughter 
 when he accompanied her to Vienna two years 
 later. The Queen had not been so fortunate 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 59 
 
 with another Httle rehc that she hoped her child 
 would receive. This consisted of a pair of gloves 
 and a lock of her hair, which she had slipped 
 into Bault's hand ; but the action was observed 
 by one of the gendarmes, and the little parcel 
 was confiscated. 
 
 There was not a moment that the Queen 
 could be out of sight of her gendarmes ; a little 
 screen four feet high was the only separation 
 between the space in which she changed her 
 dress and those men. Imagine the misery of 
 this state for a woman so delicately nurtured, 
 so luxuriously brought up, accustomed not 
 only to the most refined manner of life, but 
 to that of a court which had never been, and 
 never can be, exceeded in all that tended 
 to make existence — if mere external respect 
 
6o LAST DAYS OF 
 
 and deference can promote happiness — a living 
 pageant and a realised dream. Imagine this 
 change for a woman not only accustomed 
 to soft living, but for nearly twenty years 
 treated as half divine, having a house- 
 hold of over four hundred persons at her 
 command, and who, although she always 
 seemed to love to leave the glare and splen- 
 dour and pomp of representation for the quiet 
 of her own friends, and seemed only really 
 happy with them and her children, yet could 
 dazzle those accustomed to the greatest courts 
 by the magnificence of her state, and win the 
 admiration and homage of foreigners, who, 
 prepared to criticise, were carried away by so 
 much beauty, grace, and charm. 
 
 Alas! she whom Edmund Burke had seen 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 6 1 
 
 " glittering like the morning star, full of life and 
 splendour and joy," was hurled low indeed. 
 But to me Marie Antoinette is a far nobler 
 figure as I can see her in her last prison, with 
 her widow's cap over her almost white hair, 
 her frayed and patched black gown, and the 
 wretched truckle-bed that stands against the 
 damp stone wall of her prison, than when 
 in the heyday of her youth and beauty at 
 Versailles, the cynosure of all that is highest 
 and gayest in that huge palace, or when 
 playing the part of the miller's wife in her court 
 gardens at Trianon. Then she was but a 
 brilliant queen and attractive woman, with 
 most of the faults of her sex; but at the 
 Conciergerie she may claim in history to hold 
 a place with the noblest of human kind that 
 
62 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 have gone through great trials with added lustre 
 to their names, — of those who have attained a 
 more excellent renown, and who have come out 
 of " great tribulation " with the stains of their 
 poor humanities and weaknesses washed for 
 ever away. 
 
 Rosalie, the faithful maid, was still in at- 
 tendance on the Queen, although Michonis, 
 owing to the conspiracy of the pink, had been 
 removed. Bault, the new jailer, appears to 
 have been a well-meaning man, touched with 
 the sorrows of the august victim he had in 
 charge, but not daring to show his feelings. 
 He appears to have been distressed when, 
 on offering to do up the Queen's hair for 
 her, she gave him one of her majestic looks, 
 and said she would prefer doing that herself. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 63 
 
 Formerly a matter of immense time and trouble, 
 the Queen's hair was now soon arranged. She 
 divided it in the middle and raised it on 
 the sides, and probably — thanks to Rosalie — 
 had some perfumed powder, which she would 
 sprinkle on it whenever aware that she would 
 have to appear before her judges and the pub- 
 lic. The poor woman, with a last sad touch 
 of the wish to please, which never left her 
 even in the last bitter days, would take extra 
 pains to appear as becoming as her poor 
 means could afford. 
 
 Bault managed to arrange that the Queen 
 should have better food than the ordinary 
 of the prisoners, as had been ordered by the 
 judges. He said that, being responsible for 
 the life of the Queen, he would take charge 
 
64 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 of all the viands that entered her cell. By this 
 means he could occasionally procure her such 
 little luxuries as Madame Bault could cater 
 for in the markets, where she was known to 
 some of the market-women ; and it is not a 
 little touching to hear that these good souls" 
 would keep their best chicken and ripest fruits, 
 thrusting a peach or a melon into her willing 
 hands, with " Take it for our good Queen," 
 as they called her; and would smuggle them 
 into the basket of Dame Bault, with the tears 
 in their eyes. I never pass a Paris market, 
 and see the good-natured-looking "ladies of 
 the hall," as I believe they still call them- 
 selves, without recalling the good feeling that 
 some of their class showed to the poor Queen 
 when even to allude to her with sympathy 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 65 
 
 might bring them to the scaffold. Rosalie, 
 who still waited on her mistress, brought in 
 her dinner, which consisted of some soup and 
 chicken or veal on alternate days, with a dish 
 of vegetables. The plates and dishes were 
 of pewter. Formerly the Queen only drank 
 water. Rosalie mentions that once crossing 
 the prison-yard with a half-emptied glass of 
 water, she was accosted by a M. De Saint 
 Leger, also a prisoner, and, as it seems, a 
 devoted Royalist ; for, hearing that the Queen 
 had drank out of the glass, he took off his 
 hat and drank the remainder. Very French 
 and very pretty, and one hopes that the Queen 
 may have heard of it from Rosalie. On another 
 occasion, while Rosalie was brushing a pair 
 of the Queen's shoes, some of the imprisoned 
 
 5 
 
66 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 Royalists, who were looking through the bars 
 which separated them from the courtyard, 
 asked her to come near them in order that 
 they might touch the Queen's shoes. They not 
 only did so, but kissed them with deep respect 
 as they passed them from one to the other. 
 There was indeed no loyalty lacking here in 
 the Conciergerie, but it came too late. 
 
 The damp of the Queen's underground 
 prison was such that her black gown began to 
 fall into rags. She had another one, a white 
 one, but this she only wore during her trial and 
 on the day of her death. Rosalie patched up 
 the decaying dress as well as she could, and 
 the pieces that had fallen from it she gave 
 to some who asked for them as relics of the 
 prisoner. The few other clothes were in a 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 67 
 
 deplorable state and required constant repair. 
 The Queen was only permitted three shirts, 
 one ornamented with lace ; but the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal decided that but one of 
 these should be given the Queen, and worn 
 ten days before another was allowed her ; even 
 her handkerchiefs were only allowed one by 
 one, and a strict account was kept of every 
 article as it came from, or entered the prison. 
 
 The Queen herself kept a list of her linen, 
 marking it down with a pin on the wall. Ro- 
 salie adds that she had also scratched some 
 other things on the wall ; but after her death 
 these were all painted over with a thick coat of 
 whitewash. 
 
 Not being allowed a chest of drawers, she 
 placed her clothes in a paper box that Rosalie 
 
68 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 brought her, which she received, says Rosalie, 
 as if it had been the most beautiful piece of 
 furniture in the world. 
 
 Rosalie also procured her a little looking- 
 glass, which she had bought for twenty- 
 five sous on the Quays, a little hand-glass 
 bordered with red, with little Chinese figures 
 painted on the sides. This too seemed much 
 to please the Queen; and doubtless it gave 
 her more satisfaction than had done all the 
 miles of mirrors at Versailles. 
 
 With the month of October the cold 
 weather had set in, and the Queen's suf- 
 ferings were aggravated by this new trial, 
 against which, as the cell had no means 
 of being warmed, there was no remedy. 
 The only thing Rosalie could do was to 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 69 
 
 take the Queen's night-dress, and, after warm- 
 ing it, bring it back to the prisoner ere 
 she went to what rest she could obtain in 
 her wretched cell. No light was allowed 
 her, only the dim reflection of an oil-lamp 
 that flickered in the yard outside the grated 
 window. 
 
 In spite of all the precautions that had 
 been taken by her jailers to make escape 
 impossible, the Queen was constantly intruded 
 on by these men, at night as well as during 
 the day. One day they scolded Bault for 
 having placed by the side of the bed against 
 the wall a piece of old tapestry that pro- 
 tected the bed from the dank stones ; they 
 wished it removed, and it was only by 
 Bault's presence of mind in telling them 
 
70 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 that he had placed the tapestry there in 
 order that any sound from the adjoining cell 
 should be deadened that they allowed it to 
 remain. 
 
 The Queen having asked for a cover- 
 ing of cotton stuff, Bault took this message 
 to Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor, 
 who demanded savagely how he dared 
 prefer such a request, and, foaming with 
 rage, told Bault that he deserved to be 
 guillotined. 
 
 Some Sisters of Mercy — and never did they 
 better deserve that blessed name — were, how- 
 ever, able to send the Queen some thick 
 woollen stockings. 
 
 No wonder that among such miseries the 
 Queen's health gave way. The cold and 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 71 
 
 damp of the prison brought on severe rheu- 
 matism, and her eyesight, never strong, be- 
 came seriously affected ; one of her eyes, in 
 fact, appears to have been destroyed ; and 
 there is Httle doubt that had the trial and 
 condemnation been postponed for a few more 
 weeks, the unspeakable sufferings of Marie 
 Antoinette would have closed within the walls 
 of the Conciergerie. 
 
 Bault's widow bears testimony, in her me- 
 moir, to the wondrous endurance of the Queen. 
 She writes : — "I have seen the model of 
 resignation the most religious and of con- 
 stancy the most heroic, and it must not be 
 lost sight of that the Queen of France was 
 doomed to drink to the very dregs the bitter 
 cup of sorrow ; and my everlasting regret will 
 
72 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 be to have been unable to do more to assuage 
 her sufferings." Very noble sentiments, but 
 hardly the expression one would expect from 
 the wife of a jailer. 
 
 Through the Baults the Queen occasion- 
 ally had news of her family in the Temple ; 
 but there could be no alleviation for the poor 
 mother if she were told how it fared with her 
 beloved son. 
 
 One alleviation — the greatest for a captive 
 after the consciousness of being innocent of 
 crimes for which he suffers wrongfully — that 
 of reading, the Queen obtained through the 
 attention of her jailer, who got her a few 
 books ; but we are only told the name of 
 one, and that was a translation of our 
 Captain Cook's travels. Anything that could 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 73 
 
 have taken her mind off, even for a few 
 moments, the sufferings she endured must 
 have been an immense solace, and the stirring 
 adventures of Cook may have done this for 
 her. 
 
 One day the Queen called Rosalie's atten- 
 tion to the upper windows of an adjoining house 
 occupied by some religious order, and to the 
 figure of a sister praying. " Look how fer- 
 vently she prays," said the Queen ; and, as 
 M. De Saint Amand says in his interesting 
 book, " La Derniere Annee de Marie Antoi- 
 nette," " She may well be supposed to have 
 been praying for the captive at her feet." 
 
 Early in October the Conciergerie — ever 
 emptying its prisoners for the guillotine and 
 receiving fresh batches — witnessed the arrival 
 
74 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 of some with whom the Queen's history is 
 closely connected. The first of these was 
 the Duke of Orleans, the implacable enemy of 
 Marie Antoinette, whose courage on the way 
 to death was the only respectable thing in 
 his life ; the other, the ill-starred, mischievous, 
 but, on the whole, well-intentioned party of 
 men known as the Girondins, who soon ex- 
 perienced the effect of destroying an old 
 form of constitution without having given 
 time to a new one to be formed, — were 
 now under the same roof as the Queen, and 
 within a few hours shared the same fate. 
 One of these, Valaze — who disappointed the 
 guillotine by killing himself in prison — wrote to 
 his wife on the 7th of October. In his letter 
 he says the thing of all others that most 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 75 
 
 impresses him, and to which he cannot get 
 used, is that he is so near the widow Capet, 
 and that the same bolts and bars confine 
 them ; " as if," he says, " to show, as it were, 
 by this neighbourhood a sort of compHcity 
 between them. This of all things is perhaps 
 the most extraordinary in my destiny." 
 
 As early as the ist of August, Barere 
 had from the Tribune of the Convention 
 clamoured that the Queen should appear 
 before the Revolutionary Tribunal ; but what 
 made this difficult was that the case against 
 the Queen was not such as could ensure 
 her condemnation, and every means was put 
 into practice to get evidence against her. 
 At length a diabolical idea occurred to 
 Hebert, — no other than, by bringing a revolt- 
 
76 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 ing charge against Marie Antoinette, to 
 destroy any sympathy that might still be 
 felt for her among the public, and thus more 
 easily to condemn her in the face of the 
 world. But the monstrous charge served only 
 to prove the utter depravity of the then 
 rulers of France, and enabled the Queen, in 
 a moment and for ever, to vindicate herself, 
 and not herself only, but humanity at large, 
 against a calumny that seemed to breathe of 
 the lowest hell. 
 
 Early in October Fouquier wrote the follow- 
 ing letter to the President of the Conven- 
 tion : — 
 
 " ^th Oct. — Citizen President, — I have the 
 honour of informing the Convention that the 
 decree rendered by it on the 3d of this 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. "J"] 
 
 month, to the effect that the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal would immediately without delay 
 occupy itself with the judgment of the widow 
 Capet, reached me last night; but until now 
 no papers relative to Marie Antoinette have 
 reached me, so that, with all the desire that 
 the Tribunal has of executing the decrees 
 of the Convention, it finds itself unable to 
 carry out the decree as long as the papers 
 are not forthcoming." 
 
 As De Saint Amand writes, the condem- 
 nation to death of the Queen is not so 
 odious as the interrogatories made to the royal 
 children and Madame Elizabeth. Those who 
 wish to read these infamous charges will find 
 them in Mons. Carapardon's work, " Marie 
 Antoinette a la Conciergerie." It is enough 
 
78 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 to say that those who have the misfortune 
 to know what the accusations were will 
 know how incapable such a mother as Marie 
 Antoinette, and such a saint-like woman as 
 Madame Elizabeth were of even thinking of 
 such deeds; and to those who still are for- 
 tunate enough not to know the depravity of 
 human nature, nothing farther need be said, 
 except what relates to the course of the trial. 
 
 The unfortunate Dauphin was first exam- 
 ined. Utterly demoralized by Simon's treat- 
 ment of him, he appears to have said what- 
 ever the three scoundrels of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal, David, Pache, and Chaumette, made 
 him ; the declaration which the poor little 
 fellow signed is in existence, and it is easy 
 to see that the child was either too weak or 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 79 
 
 too dormant to do more than make a few- 
 vague marks. 
 
 His sister (Madame Royale) was next called 
 before these men. Of this interview she 
 writes the following account : — " When the 
 commissioners arrived at the door of the 
 prison, my aunt only opened the door when 
 she had finished dressing. Pache asked me 
 to come below. My aunt wished to follow me, 
 but was not allowed. She asked if I should 
 return. Chaumette reassured her, saying, ' You 
 may rely on the word of a good republican ; 
 she will return.' I overheard my aunt, who 
 was trembling all over, and went downstairs. 
 I was greatly embarrassed. It was the first 
 time that I had been alone with men; I 
 had no idea what they wanted with me ; but 
 
8o LAST DAYS OF 
 
 I recommended myself to God. When I went 
 into my brother's room " (the Dauphin, or 
 Louis XVII.) " I kissed him ; but I was taken 
 from him, and told to go into the next room. 
 Chaumette then asked me a number of ques- 
 tions of vile accusations against my mother 
 and my aunt. I was completely overcome, 
 with such a horror, and so indignant, that, in 
 spite of all the fear I felt, I could not help 
 saying how infamous I thought it. . . . In 
 spite of my tears they pressed me to answer. 
 They were things which I did not under- 
 stand ; but what I understood was so horrible 
 that I cried with indignation. I had always 
 heard my parents say that it would be prefer- 
 able to die than to be the cause of anyone's 
 ruin. At length my interrogatory finished 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 at three o'clock ; it had commenced at twelve. 
 I begged Chaumette to allow me to join my 
 brother. ' I can do nothing,' he said." 
 
 Madame Elizabeth was next examined. 
 " They asked her," says her niece in her 
 memoir, " the same questions as they had put 
 to me, and about those people whom they had 
 asked me about. She denied having carried 
 on any correspondence with the outer world, 
 and answered with intense indignation the 
 horrors about which they questioned her. At 
 four o'clock she returned upstairs. Her exam- 
 ination had only lasted one hour; mine had 
 lasted three. This was owing to the deputies 
 perceiving that they could not intimidate her, 
 as they had hoped to do with one of my 
 age " (the Princess was then aged fifteen) ; 
 
 6 
 
82 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 "but the life I had been leading during the 
 last four years, and the example given by 
 my parents, had given me greater strength 
 of soul." 
 
 Five days after this infamous attempt to 
 force from the lips of the Queen's children 
 and her sister-in-law confessions of crimes 
 against Marie Antoinette, which only the 
 imagination of such creatures as those who 
 formed the Revolutionary Tribunal were 
 capable of suggesting, the Queen's trial com- 
 menced. 
 
 The trial, if such a monstrous farce as this 
 mock trial of the Queen, who had been con- 
 demned by her judges long before, and whose 
 long-tried endurance they tried in every way to 
 shake, began at six in the evening in the great 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 83 
 
 chamber above the guardroom of the old palace. 
 Danton, who was to beg God and men pardon 
 for the act, had instituted the tribunal before 
 which the Queen and he himself were both 
 doomed to appear, — a tribunal that, between 
 its creation on the loth of March, 1793, and 
 the 27th July of the following year, sent 2,669 
 victims to the guillotine. The great hall 
 was plunged in almost total darkness. Only 
 two candles were lighted; these were placed 
 on a desk at which the registrar of the 
 tribunal, Fabricius, sat. The Queen, dressed 
 in her widow's cap and her black gown, 
 sat on a stool in front of the public prose- 
 cutor, Fouquier-Tinville, a man who eveh 
 at that time was notorious as being amongst 
 the most inhuman of the monsters who then 
 
84 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 governed revolutionary France. His appear- 
 ance has been described by Charles Mouselet 
 in his " Histoire Anecdotique du Tribunal 
 Revolutionnaire : " — " He had a round-shaped 
 head, with thick black hair, a narrow brow, 
 a coarse and pock-marked complexion, with 
 a hard and defiant expression. It was diffi- 
 cult to meet his eyes, so savage was his look. 
 When he spoke he lowered his brow, and his 
 black eyebrows met. His voice was harsh 
 and imperious; at first merely brutal and 
 coarse, he became more insolent and violent. 
 He seemed intoxicated, maddened with the 
 sight of blood, as people become with the 
 smell of powder; but his intoxication was 
 ferocious, without pity, and every victim 
 seemed to be his personal enemy." 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 85 
 
 The tribunal which judged the Queen was 
 composed of a president and four judges, the 
 public prosecutor, the chief registrar, and fifteen 
 jurymen. The President's name was Her- 
 man, formerly a judge of the Pas-de-Calais; 
 Cofifinhul, Maire, Douze-Verteuil, and Deliege, 
 the judges ; the registrar, whose real name 
 was Paris, had, in consequence of that being 
 the name of the person who killed Michel 
 Lepelletier, altered it into the more classical 
 and sounding one of Fabricius. The witnesses, 
 over forty in number, consisted of all classes. 
 They appear to have been selected as much as 
 possible from among those who were known 
 or thought to be the enemies of the Queen. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville had himself drawn out at 
 great length the act of accusation against the 
 
86 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 prisoner, which the Queen's counsel, Chau- 
 veau-Lagarde, did not exaggerate when he 
 characterized it as "Foeuvre d'enfer." In it 
 the Queen is compared to Messalina, Brune- 
 hauldt, Fredegonde, and the Medici. He 
 declared that since her arrival in France she 
 had been the curse and leech of the French 
 nation ; that she had maintained a secret corre- 
 spondence with the man known as the King 
 of Bohemia and of Hungary ; that her aim was 
 the ruin of the country ; that by her instigation, 
 and in concert with the brothers of Louis Capet 
 and the infamous Calonne, formerly Minister 
 of Finance, she had lavished the wealth of the 
 country, the spoils of the sweat of the people, 
 in maintaining her criminal expenditure and 
 in paying the agents of her treasonable in- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 87 
 
 trigues ; that she had sent millions out of the 
 country to the Emperor, in order to maintain 
 the war against the Republic, and that she had 
 thus exhausted the revenues of the country. 
 Farther, that since the commencement of the 
 Revolution she had not ceased an instant from 
 maintaining a treasonable correspondence with 
 the enemy, and by every means in her power 
 aided and abetted a counter-revolution. He 
 then went back to the celebrated affair of 
 the Gardes du Corps at Versailles in 1789 
 at great length, and also to the flight of 
 Varennes ; accused her of the loss of life on 
 the 17th July, 1792, at the Champ de Mars, 
 and declared that it is owing to her that the 
 massacres occurred at Nancy and elsewhere. 
 But it is needless to follow at greater length 
 
88 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 this endless series of accusations, which seem 
 more as if they came from the disordered brain 
 of a homicidal maniac than the accusations of 
 a man in his senses. Indeed, one can only 
 believe that some of the writings and actions of 
 the actors in the year of terror 1793 were 
 owing to a state of madness. It is said, 
 and on good authority, that Fouquier-Tinville 
 latterly confessed to being pursued by horrible 
 visions, and said that he distinctly saw the 
 spirits of those he had sent to death menacing 
 him, not in his dreams, like Richard III., but 
 in broad daylight. 
 
 In his charge he also referred to the horrors . 
 of which the Queen had been accused when 
 in the Temple, and if regret could find a 
 place in such a nature at having gone so 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 89 
 
 far, the manner in which the Queen met this 
 hideous calumny must have told even on 
 Fouquier-Tinville. When Robespierre heard 
 what a sensation the sublime manner in which 
 the Queen had met that charge had made, 
 and the effect it had on the audience, he, 
 being then at dinner, broke his plate with 
 rage, and cursed the folly of Hebert and 
 Tinville in preferring it. 
 
 The first day's trial seems to have been un- 
 important. The Queen, on being asked her 
 name, replied, " Marie Antoinette de Lorraine 
 d'Autriche, aged thirty-eight, widow of the 
 King of France." As M. De Saint Amand 
 remarks, she was not so old as she said, as 
 only on the 2d of November would she enter 
 her thirty-ninth year. 
 
90 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 Q. You had, before the Revolution, politi- 
 cal relations with the King of Bohemia and 
 Hungary, which relations were opposed to the 
 interests of France? 
 
 A. The King of Bohemia being my brother, 
 I had no other but friendly intelligence with 
 him, and not political. If they had been the 
 latter, they would but have benefited France, 
 to which country my marriage had allied 
 me. 
 
 Q. Not content with ruining the finances of 
 France for your pleasures and intrigues, in 
 concert with infamous Ministers, you sent out 
 of the country which nourished you millions 
 to the Emperor? 
 
 A. Never! I know this accusation has often 
 been brought against me. I loved my hus- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 91 
 
 band too well to dilapidate his country. My 
 brother had no need of French money; and 
 by the ties which held me to France I could 
 not have given him any. 
 
 Q. It is you who taught Louis Capet the 
 profound art of dissimulation, wherewith he 
 too long deceived the good French people, 
 who could not imagine such depths of perfidy 
 possible } 
 
 A. Yes. The people have been deceived, 
 and most cruelly, but neither by my husband 
 nor by me. 
 
 Q. You have never ceased for an instant 
 to wish to destroy liberty; on any terms you 
 wished to govern, and to reascend the throne 
 over the corpses of the patriots } 
 
 A. We had no need to remount the throne ; 
 
92 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 we were on it. We never wished anything but 
 the happiness of France; that she might be 
 happy, this was all we desired. 
 
 Q. What interest do you attach to the aims 
 of the Republic? 
 
 A. The happiness of France is what I desire 
 above all things. 
 
 Q. Do you think that kings are necessary 
 to ensure the happiness of nations? 
 
 A. An individual cannot decide such a 
 question. 
 
 Q. You doubtless regret that your son has 
 lost a throne, on which he might have been 
 seated, if it had not been that the people, en- 
 lightened as to their rights, had broken it? 
 
 A. I should never regret anything for my 
 son, as long as my country is happy. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 93 
 
 Two names that will be remembered as 
 long as any of the actors of this tragedy now 
 appear, — Tronson-Ducoudray and Chauveau- 
 Lagarde. The latter has left an account of 
 his interview with the Queen, whose honoura- 
 ble mission, with Ducoudray, was to appear 
 as her defender. Lagarde was out of Paris on 
 the 15th of October when a message reached 
 him to present himself at the Conciergerie. 
 He was told at the same time that the trial 
 would be resumed at eight o'clock on the 
 morning following. He lost not a moment in 
 presenting himself before his client. 
 
 " No one," he writes in his account of 
 Marie Antoinette's trial, — "no one who can 
 put himself into my place, and, forcing him- 
 self in such a spot, can but imagine what 
 
94 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 my feelings were on seeing the august pris- 
 oner, widow of the pious descendant of St. 
 Louis, daughter of the Emperor of Germany, 
 a Queen who, by her grace and goodness, had 
 been the joy of the most brilHant court in 
 Europe, and who had once been the idol of 
 the French nation. 
 
 "On approaching the Queen, my knees 
 trembled, my eyes filled with tears. I was 
 far more embarrassed than if I had been pre- 
 sented to the Queen and seen her in the midst 
 of her court, surrounded by all the pomp of 
 power. She received me with so serene a 
 majesty that I was soon reassured. I read 
 with her the act of accusation. On reading 
 this infernal work, I alone was overcome. The 
 Queen with perfect self-possession spoke to 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 95 
 
 me about it. She noticed that the gendarme 
 could overhear her, but, saying that this was 
 of no consequence, she continued her con- 
 versation with the same cahn." 
 
 After inspecting the papers regarding the 
 Queen and the heads of accusations brought 
 against her, he found it impossible to arrange 
 a defence during the short interval allowed 
 him. He returned to the Queen, and in- 
 formed her that it was absolutely necessary 
 to obtain a delay in order that he should 
 prepare the defence. " To whom will you 
 apply," asked the Queen, "for this delay.?" 
 When he said, " To the National Conven- 
 tion," the Queen at first positively refused, 
 so great was her detestation of that body, 
 which had ordered the execution of her 
 
96 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 husband. But Chauveau-Lagarde declared 
 it must be done ; that it behooved him 
 and his colleague not to omit any circum- 
 stance that could be of use to their cause; 
 that without a thorough examination of all 
 the accusations brought against her they 
 would fail in their duty; that it was not 
 necessary for the Queen to frame under her 
 own name the demand to the Convention, 
 but to address, in the name of her advocates, 
 a plea against a precipitancy of action which 
 was an outrage to the name of justice. They 
 had not only, he urged, to defend the Queen, 
 but also the widow of Louis XVI., the 
 mother of that monarch's children, and the 
 sister whose name had been placed with hers 
 in the accusation. The Queen, till then in- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 97 
 
 flexible, now gave way to his entreaties ; and 
 herself wrote a letter to the Assembly, in 
 the name of her defenders, claiming a delay 
 for them. The letter was as follows: — 
 
 " Citizen President, — The Citizens Tronson 
 and Chauveau, whom the Tribunal have 
 given me as defenders, call my attention to 
 the fact that they have only to-day been told 
 of their mission, and in so short a time it is 
 impossible for them to examine the charges, 
 or even to go through them. I owe it to 
 my children to omit no way of entirely 
 justifying myself of these charges. My de- 
 fenders ask for a delay of three days; I 
 trust that the Convention will accord this to 
 
 them." 
 
 7 
 
98 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 This letter, when it reached the hands of 
 Fouquier-Tinville, went no farther; no notice 
 was taken of it, and on the following morn- 
 ing (15th October) the Queen's trial was 
 resumed. 
 
 On her second examination the Queen 
 was allowed a chair. She wore the same 
 dress as when she first appeared before her 
 judges, and during the long day and far 
 into the next night maintained the composure 
 which had struck even those who most hated 
 her. At times she seemed unconscious of the 
 scene enacted around her, and her fingers 
 were observed to run on the arms of the chair 
 as if she were playing on a pianoforte. 
 
 Poor Rosalie seems to have been much 
 distressed at the Queen having been taken 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 99 
 
 from her prison at eight in the morning 
 without having had any kind of food, and 
 it was not till four in the afternoon that 
 she managed to obtain some broth for her. 
 But Rosalie had not the satisfaction of being 
 allowed to take it herself to the Queen ; and 
 she indignantly tells how one of the commis- 
 saries of police snatched the plate from her 
 hands and gave it to an overdressed woman 
 who was by him, who had expressed a desire 
 to see the prisoner, and who took it hence, 
 after having spilled half its contents. 
 
 The hall was densely crowded. Among the 
 mob that came in order to enjoy the spec- 
 tacle of the poor woman, once their Queen, 
 being for hours browbeaten by Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville, may have been a few sympathisers, a 
 
lOO LAST DAYS OF 
 
 few still loyal at heart, and with deepest 
 sympathy for her to whom they were unable 
 even to show a sign of pity or respect. Some 
 arrests were made by one of the inspectors of 
 prisons, who had distinguished himself in the 
 human butcheries of September; but only once 
 did the crowd, for one instant roused by the 
 noble dignity of the prisoner and the atrocious 
 charge preferred against her, show any feeling 
 in her favour. 
 
 The Queen, emaciated and pale as death, 
 took her seat, after being told by the Presi- 
 dent that she might seat herself. The act 
 of accusation was read, and the witnesses 
 appeared. Of these there were forty-one — 
 men of all sorts and conditions. Among them 
 was an ex-admiral and general, Charles Henri 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. lOI 
 
 d'Estaing, ex-Marquis Latour du Pin, ex-Mayor 
 of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly (all these three 
 doomed to the guillotine), merchants and 
 gendarmes, a doctor, an artist, servants and 
 jailers. Among the forty-and-one, Simon, the 
 jailer of the Dauphin; Lecointre, who was a 
 national guard at Versailles in the days of 
 October; and Hebert, the notorious editor of 
 the " Pere Duchesne," were specially selected 
 as known enemies of the prisoner; and a 
 woman named Reine Millot, formerly a servant 
 in the royal family, who declared that the 
 Queen had sent two hundred million francs 
 to Vienna. These were ready to swear any- 
 thing, however improbable, however atrocious, 
 against the Queen. 
 
 As might have been expected, such men as 
 
I02 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Bailly, D'Estaing, Latour du Pin, and Bernier, 
 the doctor of the Queen's children, treated the 
 august captive with respect. They knew that 
 this conduct would but ensure their own death- 
 warrants; and even Manuel, formerly one of the 
 chiefs of the commune, now appeared touched 
 by so much misery so nobly endured. 
 
 All through the long hours of that awful 
 day the different witnesses were questioned and 
 cross-questioned. She saw again faces famil- 
 iar to her in the past years — faces that must 
 have recalled Versailles and the Tuileries; 
 and with what feelings of horror must she 
 have recognised her son's jailer and perse- 
 cutor among that crowd of witnesses! 
 
 When Hebert's time arrived, and the 
 charges relative to the conduct of the Queen 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 03 
 
 with her son were again alluded to, the Queen 
 deigned no reply. Seeing this, one of the 
 jurors called the attention of the President 
 to her silence. One can imagine what a hush 
 must at that moment have fallen on that 
 great crowd, eager to know what the Queen 
 would answer to such an infamy. But Marie 
 Antoinette was equal, aye, more than equal, to 
 the occasion. She rose from her chair, and 
 with a majestic voice exclaimed, " If I have 
 not answered, it is because Nature herself 
 refuses to answer such an accusation made 
 to a mother. I appeal to all that may be 
 present." A thrill ran through the vast hall 
 — a thrill that has not ceased to be felt by 
 all who can enter into what the feelings of 
 that mother were at such a moment. No 
 
I04 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 wonder that, later in the day, a rumour got 
 abroad that, after all, the Queen would be 
 spared — would be transported, but not exe- 
 cuted, and that Rosalie heard it said that the 
 Queen had answered like an angel. 
 
 Throughout the trial there does not seem 
 to have been amongst the crowd any strong 
 expression of feeling either against or for the 
 Queen ; but they frequently called on her 
 to rise, so that she should be better seen 
 than when seated ; and once at this demand 
 she had said, "When will the people be tired 
 of my sufferings ? " 
 
 Although none of the witnesses could bring 
 any proof of the things some alleged against 
 her, such as that she had intrigued with some 
 of the municipals when in the Temple, as 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 105 
 
 Simon swore; or that she had, as Tissot 
 averred (the editor of a sheet only second in 
 sanguinary abominations to that of the P^re 
 Duchesne), given bonds which he declared he 
 had seen signed by her to obtain money out 
 of the public treasury, none of these were 
 produced; nor could the letter which Didier 
 Journeil swore he had seen, in which the 
 Queen asked if the Swiss guard were to 
 be trusted, and if they would be prepared 
 to act when the time came. Although none 
 of these accusations could be in any way 
 proved, it was clear that the Queen was pre- 
 judged long before she appeared before the 
 Revolutionary bar, and that Fouquier-Tinville 
 had already her death-warrant in his pocket 
 ready to sign. 
 
I06 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 The Queen was asked the most trivial ques« 
 tions as well as the most outrageously absurd. 
 
 " Did you not," the President asks her, 
 ** abuse your influence over your husband 
 in order to get funds out of the public 
 treasury ? " 
 
 " Never," replies the Queen. 
 
 Q. Where, then, did you obtain all the 
 money with which you built and furnished the 
 Little Trianon, where you gave fetes of which 
 you were always the goddess? 
 
 A. It was from a fund that had been 
 made specially for that purpose. 
 
 Q. Was it not at the Little Trianon that 
 you became first acquainted with the La- 
 motte ? 
 
 A, I never even saw her. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE, 107 
 
 Q. Was she not your victim in the famous 
 case about the diamond necklace ? 
 
 A. She could not have been, for I did not 
 know her. 
 
 Q. You then persist in saying that you did 
 not know her? 
 
 A. My place is not to deny; it is only 
 the truth I have told, and intend to tell. 
 
 Q. Did you not oblige the Ministers of 
 Finance to deliver up to her funds; and on 
 some of them refusing, did you not threaten 
 them with your displeasure? 
 
 A. Never. 
 
 Q. Did you not ask Vergennes to send 
 six millions to the King of Bohemia and 
 Hungary? 
 
 A, No. 
 
Io8 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 She is then accused of having been taken 
 into the confidence of the King, through a 
 letter written to a Minister, regarding the plan 
 of a campaign, with the intention, probably 
 understood, of inciting a civil war. The 
 Queen had never heard of such a letter. 
 However, the President again told her that 
 it was notorious that her influence over the 
 King was such as to make him do as she 
 wished; and this charge, which to us seems 
 not at all an unnatural one, knowing how 
 very weak and wavering a man was poor 
 Louis, appeared a capital crime to those 
 who had a few months ago sentenced the 
 King to death, as being the cause of the 
 internecine war and for corresponding with 
 the enemy. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 109 
 
 Even the Queen's family name was brought 
 against her as a proof of crime. President 
 Herman declared that as the Queen gave 
 her name as that of Marie Antoinette de 
 Lorraine d'Autriche, it follows that she in- 
 tended seizing Lorraine and transferring it to 
 Germany. 
 
 " Did you not," he asks, " conceive such a 
 project at the time of your marriage ? " 
 
 On the Queen denying this absurd charge, 
 the President remarked that she called her- 
 self by the name of that province. He then 
 changed his ground, and demanded why the 
 Queen had treated her son (Louis XVII.) 
 in such a way that it was evident she looked 
 on him as the successor of his father on the 
 throne. 
 
no LAST DAYS OF 
 
 The Queen simply answered this by saying 
 her son was too young to talk to on the 
 subject; that he sat at the end of the table 
 at meals, and that she waited on him herself 
 when he required it. 
 
 At four o'clock the sitting was suspended 
 for an hour. It was not till then that the 
 Queen, who must have been half dead with 
 fatigue and thirst, got some broth, carried to 
 her, as I have already said, not by Rosalie, 
 but by the hands of a stranger. That there 
 was risk in showing even so small an attention 
 to the prisoner is shown in the case of the 
 gendarme de Busne, who had, when no one 
 else dared, brought her a glass of water. For 
 this action, or for having offered her his 
 arm when, half blind as she had become, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. Ill 
 
 the Queen could scarcely see her way along 
 the darkening corridors of the prison, he was 
 cashiered and imprisoned. 
 
 At the end of the examination of the 
 forty-one witnesses, the President asked the 
 Queen if she had anything to say for her 
 defence. 
 
 " Yesterday," answered she, " I did not know 
 the name of my witnesses, and did not know 
 what they would charge me with. Not one 
 of them has brought any single proof against 
 me. I end by saying, that, being the wife of 
 Louis XVI., I had to conform to his wishes." 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville then launched out in a 
 tirade against the Queen, who had been, he 
 declared, the cause of all the misfortunes of 
 the country. 
 
1 1 2 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 It was midnight when the President in- 
 formed the Queen's defenders that in a quarter 
 of an hour the hearing of the witnesses would 
 end, and that they had to be ready with 
 their defence. A quarter of an hour was 
 given to the two advocates to answer the 
 host of statements that had been deposed 
 to during the last twelve hours against 
 her. They were merely listened to as 
 a mere matter of form, Tinville being im- 
 patient to close this lugubrious farce of a 
 trial. 
 
 When they had finished, Herman, the 
 President, summed up in a virulent diatribe, 
 in which he said that at length a great 
 example, a great act of justice, was given 
 to the universe. " At length," he said, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. II3 
 
 "equality triumphs. A woman that had been 
 surrounded by all that was most brilliant, 
 all that the pride of kings and the servility of 
 slaves could invent, now occupies in the face 
 of the people's tribunal the same position 
 as any other malefactor. In this matter 
 not single actions or crimes have been sub- 
 mitted to your conscience and your enlight- 
 enment. You have to judge the entire life of 
 the accused since she seated herself by the 
 side of the last King of the French. If one 
 could have done so, we should have called 
 before the jury the shades of our brothers 
 massacred at Nancy, in the Champ de Mars, 
 in the frontier, in the Vendee, at Marseilles, 
 at Lyons, and at Toulon, destroyed in conse- 
 quence of the infernal machinations of this 
 
114 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 modern Medicis." In conclusion he said, 
 "As I have already stated, it is the entire 
 nation who accuse Antoinette; all the politi- 
 cal events that have occurred during the last 
 five years are due to her, and arraign her. 
 The following are the questions which the 
 tribunal submits to you," — addressing the 
 jury: — " ist, Has it been proved that intrigues 
 have been carried on between foreign powers 
 and other external enemies of the republic; 
 and if so, have those intrigues afforded them 
 help and money which has enabled them to 
 invade the French territory and facilitated 
 the progress of their arms? 2nd, Has Marie 
 Antoinette of Austria, widow of Louis Capet, 
 been found guilty of co-operating with such 
 manoeuvres, and carried on intelligence with 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. II5 
 
 the enemy? 3rd, Has it been shown that 
 a conspiracy has existed inciting a civil war 
 in the interior of the republic? 4th, Has 
 Marie Antoinette been found guilty of abet- 
 ting such a conspiracy ? " 
 
 After being out of court an hour, the jury 
 returned into the audience chamber. The 
 chief juryman gave an affirmative answer to 
 all the four counts of the indictment. 
 
 The Queen, who had left the hall at the 
 same time as the jury, was now led in again. 
 The President read the declaration of the 
 jury aloud. Fouquier-Tinville then announced 
 that, in conformity with the two rules laid 
 down by the application of criminal law, Marie 
 Antoinette is sentenced to death; her goods, 
 if any, to be confiscated to the Republic ; and 
 
Il6 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 that the just judgment be carried out with- 
 in twenty-four hours in the Square of the 
 Revolution. Herman inquired if the accused 
 had any observation to make regarding the 
 application of the law as invoked by the pub- 
 lic prosecutor. For answer the Queen merely 
 shook her head. The sentence of death was 
 then delivered. 
 
 It was ten minutes past four in the morn- 
 ing of the 1 6th of October. The Queen 
 had, with hardly an interval, endured this 
 trial more than twenty hours. 
 
 The Queen appeared the calmest and the 
 least excited person in court; she displayed 
 no sign of emotion. Rising from her seat, she 
 walked away calmly and serenely, leaving her 
 judges — or rather murderers — without one 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 17 
 
 look of reproach or a shade of anger. But 
 on nearing the portion of the hall where, 
 beyond the barriers, the mob was collected, 
 she raised somewhat her noble head. There 
 does not seem to have been any demonstra- 
 tion here, amidst the people who loved to 
 jeer and mock the condemned as they were 
 led back to prison, in the short interval that 
 was left them still between time and eternity. 
 It may well be that the long patience of the 
 Queen, her simple deportment, and yet the 
 stately appearance of the woman, checked any 
 such show of feeling even among the mob, 
 eager to behold suffering and to feast their 
 eyes on the last moments of the victims of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 A great French painter has left a picture 
 
Il8 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 of this scene. The Queen faces the spec- 
 tator as she walks along the side of the 
 barriers, above which the mixed crowd are 
 eagerly scanning her; behind follow the gen- 
 darmes with shouldered muskets; beyond, 
 under the dim light of a lamp, appear the 
 faces of the judges — a lurid background. Dela- 
 roche has introduced the thin handsome face 
 of a youth, who seems to feel the iniquity 
 of the transaction keenly: we recognise the 
 features of Bonaparte. Next to the almost 
 angelic sublimity of the figure of the Queen, 
 the most touching thing in the picture is the 
 face of a young girl, who gazes with a look of 
 ineffable pity through her tears at the Queen 
 as she walks by. 
 
 Very truly has Sainte-Beuve written of this 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 19 
 
 trial of Marie Antoinette. " I do not believe," 
 he says, " that a monument of more atrocious 
 stupidity, of greater ignominy for our species, 
 can exist than this trial of Marie Antoinette, 
 such as it can be read in the 29th volume of 
 Parliamentary History of the French Revolu- 
 tion. Most of the Queen's answers have been 
 altered or suppressed, but, as in all iniquitous 
 trials, the very text of the accusations tells 
 against the assassins. When one reflects that 
 a century which considered itself enlightened 
 and of the most refined civilization, ends with 
 public acts of such barbarity, one begins to 
 doubt of human nature itself, and to fear that 
 the brute which is always in human nature 
 has the ascendancy." 
 
 In the accounts of the last hours of the 
 
I20 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Queen there are some discrepancies. Though 
 De Goncourt, for instance, in his admirable 
 life of Marie Antoinette, says, that after her 
 condemnation Marie Antoinette was not led 
 back to the prison she had occupied since the 
 1 1 th of September, but to the condemned cell, 
 a prison constructed in one of the angles of the 
 outer ward, Saint Amand and others state, on 
 the other hand, that the prisoner passed the 
 few hours left her before execution in her old 
 prison; and this seems to me, from several 
 circumstances, more probable than the for- 
 mer version. Nor does Rosalie Lamorliere 
 refer to the Queen having been removed 
 to another prison after the trial, which she 
 would doubtless have done had it taken 
 place. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 121 
 
 But one alteration the Queen must have 
 noticed on her return to prison ; this was, 
 that the gendarme de Busne, who had shown 
 enough compassion to bring her a glass of 
 water when she complained of thirst, and who, 
 when, half blind and weak from the long fast 
 and the accumulated misery she had endured, 
 and almost falling, on coming to the steps 
 which lead down to the corridor, let fall that 
 piteous complaint, "I can go no farther; I 
 cannot see," had given her his arm, was no 
 longer there to assist her. 
 
 In those last hours it seems that the guard 
 over the Queen was a little relaxed. She was 
 allowed for the first time a light, and the turn- 
 key was allowed to bring her writing materials. 
 It was then that she wrote that letter to her 
 
122 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, which is the 
 noblest memento to her memory. It must 
 have been broad daylight before she could 
 have finished that letter — the light of her last 
 day in this troublesome world. 
 
 To have been able, after all she had gone 
 through, to write that noble letter, so firm even 
 in its writing, so divine in its forgiveness of 
 her enemies, so tender in its allusions and its 
 affection for her loved ones, proves, if farther 
 proof were necessary, what a glorious charac- 
 ter was that of the Queen — a character and 
 nature which had come out so nobly from the 
 fierce fire of suffering and trial such as few 
 human beings can have known or conceived. 
 
 The letter, which it is almost a sacrilege 
 to attempt to translate, is as follows: — 
 
^ 
 
 4: ^Rl'^.i 
 
 
 
Ay.d.y.. ^/T'-^M'- Aj^^.^t^^- ,iuZsi,.^r.£ -^ .y. ^- 
 
 
 

 

 7 ^ci ^/7i^veM^, ^(ti<4'0ia/i:> £i> (ft dei> A_ 
 
 
 '''""'^"''''"'' /'•"""*'■<"-/-'/ ^..A/,.. ,„ ,w,. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 123 
 
 " 16M October^ half-past four d clock of the 
 morning. — It is to you, my sister, that I write 
 for the last time. I have been condemned — 
 not to a shameful death, it is only such to crim- 
 inals,^ but to rejoin your brother. Innocent 
 like him, I hope to show the same firmness as 
 he in the last moments. I am calm, as one is 
 when one's conscience has nothing to reproach 
 one with. I feel a profound regret to leave my 
 poor children ; you know I lived but for them. 
 And for you, my good and tender sister — you, 
 who by your friendship have sacrificed every- 
 thing in order to remain with us, in what a 
 situation do I leave you! I have learnt in 
 the course of the trial that my daughter has 
 
 1 The Queen must have had Corneille's fine line in her 
 mind— "Le crime fait la honte, et non I'dchafaud"— when 
 she wrote this passage. 
 
124 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 been separated from you. Alas ! poor child ! 
 I dare not write to her; she would not re- 
 ceive my letter. I do not know even if this 
 will reach you. Receive for them both, by 
 this, my benediction. I hope that one day, 
 when they will be older, that they will be again 
 united with you, to enjoy your tender care. 
 May they both think of what I have never 
 ceased to instil into them, that high principle, 
 and the exact performance of duty, are the 
 most important things in life; that affection 
 and mutual trust will ensure its happiness ; 
 that my daughter may feel at her present 
 age that she must ever be ready to help 
 her brother by advice, which the larger 
 experience she possesses and her affection 
 may dictate. May my son, for his part, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 125 
 
 render every attention to his sister, every 
 service that affection can prompt. May 
 they mutually feel that, in whatever position 
 they may find themselves, that their only hap- 
 piness can be in mutual affection. May they 
 take example by us. How often in our mis- 
 fortunes has our affection been our consolation ! 
 When one is happy, one's happiness is doubled 
 by sharing it with a friend ; and where can one 
 find a friend more tender, more true, than in 
 one's own family ? May my son never, never 
 forget the last words of his father, which I now 
 repeat expressly to him : ' That he must never 
 seek to revenge our death.' I have to speak 
 to you of a subject very painful to my heart. 
 I know how much trouble this child must have 
 caused you ; forgive him, my dear sister ; 
 
126 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 think of his age, and how easy it is to get a 
 child to say what one wants, and even what he 
 himself cannot understand. A day will come, 
 I hope, when he will feel all the more all he 
 owes to your tenderness for both of us. It still 
 remains for me to confide to you my last 
 thoughts. I had wished to write them at the 
 beginning of the trial; but besides my not 
 being allowed to write, the proceedings have 
 been so rapid that I should not even have had 
 time enough. I die in the Catholic apostolic 
 and Roman religion, that of my fathers, in which 
 I have been brought up, and which I have 
 always professed; having no spiritual consola- 
 tion to expect, not knowing whether there still 
 exist here any priests of that religion; and 
 even if there were, the place where I am 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 27 
 
 would expose them too much if they were to 
 come here. I sincerely demand pardon of 
 God of all the faults I may have committed. 
 I hope that in His goodness He will deign 
 to receive my last prayers, as well as those 
 which I have made for a long while, that 
 He will deign to receive my soul in His 
 mercy and goodness. I ask pardon of all 
 I know, and of you, my sister, in particular, 
 for all the trouble that, without meaning, I 
 may have caused them. I forgive my ene- 
 mies all the harm they have done me. I 
 bid farewell to my aunts and all my brothers 
 and sisters. 
 
 " I had friends ; the idea of being for ever 
 separated from them and their sorrows is one 
 of the greatest regrets that I carry away with 
 
128 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 me in my death. May they learn, at least, 
 that until my last moment I thought of them. 
 
 " Adieu, my good and tender sister ; may 
 this letter reach you! Think always of me: I 
 kiss you with my whole heart, as well as those 
 poor dear children. My God! how agonising 
 it is to leave them for ever ! Adieu, adieu I I 
 will now only occupy myself with my spiritual 
 duties. As my actions are not free, they may 
 perhaps bring me a priest ; but I here protest 
 that I will not say a word to him, and that 
 I will treat him as a perfect stranger." 
 
 This letter never reached its destination. 
 Bault gave it into the charge of Fouquier- 
 Tinville, who kept it. When he was arrested 
 after the " 9th Thermidor," this letter was 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 129 
 
 seized with his other papers. On it may 
 be seen Fouquier-Tinville's signature, as well 
 as those of the commissioners, Lecointre, 
 Legot, and Massieu. In 18 16 the letter 
 was first made public. An ex-Conventionist, 
 Courtois, gave it to some person unknown, 
 who presented it to Louis XVIII. It is 
 now carefully preserved in a cabinet in the 
 archives of the city of Paris, where I was 
 permitted, through the courtesy of the offi- 
 cials, to have a photograph taken of it. 
 
 In the expiatory chapel to the memory of 
 Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in Paris, 
 at the base of the monument to the Queen 
 this letter has been engraved in the marble. 
 Never, indeed, has a more touching last will 
 and testament been handed down to posterity. 
 
 9 
 
1 30 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 The letter ends somewhat abruptly, and it 
 has been conjectured that the Queen was in- 
 terrupted before she had finished her letter ; 
 but as it is, nothing more is needed. The 
 allusion made to the probable visit of a 
 priest, and to her intention of treating him 
 as an absolute stranger, refers to the proba- 
 bility of one of the priests who had sworn 
 fidelity to the constitution being sent to 
 her. It is difficult now to realise the hor- 
 ror which these Revolutionist priests inspired 
 among Roman Catholics during the days 
 of the Revolution. It was with the greatest 
 difficulty that Louis XVI. was forced to 
 give way regarding the rights of the priest- 
 hood; and the Queen had a perfect horror 
 of these men, who had, as she considered, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 131 
 
 become traitors to God and to their re- 
 ligion. 
 
 In Madame Royale's memoir allusion is 
 made to the supposed visit of a priest, by 
 whom the sacraments were administered to 
 the Queen ; but I think this is a case of the 
 wish having been father to the thought; and 
 neither Rosalie Lamorliere nor the wife of 
 Bault alludes to such an occurrence, which, 
 had it taken place, they would most probably 
 have done. I believe the only priest who 
 saw the Queen was one named Girard, the 
 cure of the Church of Saint-Landry, who 
 entered her prison at half-past seven on the 
 day of her death. He asked her whether 
 she would confess herself to him. She asked 
 him who he was. He replied, "A cure of 
 
132 LAST BAYS OF 
 
 Paris." " There are few such," said the 
 Queen. He then asked the Queen if he 
 should accompany her to the scaffold. " As 
 you please," she answered ; but she pre- 
 ferred making her peace with God alone to 
 confessing to a man whom she considered 
 a renegade and a perjured servant of her 
 Lord. 
 
 After writing her letter, the Queen lay 
 down on her bed, where, coming into the 
 prison, Rosalie found her. She complained 
 of suffering from cold, and had covered her 
 feet with her pillow. An officer of the 
 gendarmerie was seated in a corner of the 
 room when Rosalie entered. The Queen, 
 whose face was turned to the wall, was cry- 
 ing silently, and had probably not slept. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 33 
 
 Rosalie asked her if she would have any 
 food. " Bring me a little broth," she an- 
 swered ; but was only able to swallow a few 
 spoonfuls. 
 
 At eight o'clock, after the priest had seen 
 Marie Antoinette, Rosalie returned to the 
 Queen to help her to change her dress. The 
 Queen with her own hands laid out her shirt, 
 and the white gown she had kept for this her 
 last appearance in public. The gendarme, 
 who never let his prisoner out of sight for 
 an instant, approached the two women — the 
 Queen, who had stooped behind the low 
 screen, so as to be as much hidden as 
 possible, and Rosalie, who stood in front of 
 her. Seeing this, Marie Antoinette implored 
 him, while hastily crossing her shawl over 
 
134 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 her shoulders, with extreme gentleness, to 
 be allowed to change her clothes without 
 his watching her. " I cannot consent to 
 that," was the brutal answer ; " my orders 
 are to watch all your movements." The 
 Queen sighed, and, with as much secrecy 
 as was possible, changed her dress, remov- 
 ing the black gown she had worn during 
 the trial, and replacing it with the white 
 one, tying the muslin (fichu) shawl behind 
 her, after crossing it below her neck, and 
 was now ready for death. 
 
 Rosalie, who dared not even bid the 
 Queen farewell, now left her, retiring to her 
 room, where we can well believe that "she 
 wept bitterly." There was enough, surely, to 
 make the very stones cry out and weep. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 35 
 
 Between that hour — soon after eight — and 
 ten the Queen was engaged in prayer. 
 
 At ten the turnkey Lariviere entered the 
 prison; he was the son of the old woman 
 who had waited on the Queen when she 
 first came to the Conciergerie. He said 
 that Bault had told him to go to the 
 Queen, and to wait there for him. The 
 Queen asked him to thank his mother for 
 the trouble she had taken when with her, 
 and to pray for her. 
 
 Another gendarme had meanwhile entered 
 the prison, and soon after the judges entered 
 with the registrar, Fabricius. The Queen, 
 who had been on her knees by her truckle- 
 bed, now rose to receive them. Hebert 
 addressed her first. " Listen," said he, " to 
 
1 36 LAST DA YS OF 
 
 your sentence." All four took off their hats, 
 which appears to have struck the others as 
 a peculiar mark of respect ; — of respect, I 
 take it, to the Tribunal, and not intended 
 as a mark of respect to the Queen, al- 
 though Bault's wife remarks that they seemed 
 struck by the majestic appearance of the 
 Queen. 
 
 " It is unnecessary," said Marie Antoinette, 
 " to read it ; I know but too well the sen- 
 tence." 
 
 One of the judges said, " That is of no 
 consequence; it has to be read to you a 
 second time." 
 
 The Queen said no more, and the sen- 
 tence was read. 
 
 While this was going on, the executioner, 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 37 
 
 Sanson, a youth of gigantic stature, entered. 
 He approached the Queen and said, " Give 
 me your hands." 
 
 The Queen for the moment appeared to 
 lose her self-control and started back. *' Will 
 my hands be tied? The King's were not." 
 (Here the poor Queen made a mistake, as 
 Louis's hands were fastened, but not till he 
 had reached the scaffold.) 
 
 " Do your duty ! " said the judges to 
 Sanson ; and those fair white hands were 
 roughly and "too tightly" [trop fort) bound 
 by a cord behind her back. 
 
 To revert for a moment to the costume 
 the Queen wore at her execution. Besides 
 the gown and shawl, both of which were 
 white, she had placed a small linen cap on 
 
138 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 her head, but had removed the black 
 widow's crape bands that till that day had 
 gone around it, and, falling at the sides, were 
 attached by a loose knot over her breast. 
 This detail is not as trivial as it may 
 seem, for it shows how much the poor 
 woman must have realised her last moments, 
 and had so prepared her head-dress that in 
 a moment she could remove her cap and 
 be ready for the fatal blow. On her feet 
 were a pair of high-heeled shoes, which 
 she had taken great care of. The shape of 
 these high-heeled shoes was called "^ la 
 St. Huberty'' Whether or not she her- 
 self had cut her hair before Sanson ap- 
 peared, as some think (the De Goncourts, 
 among others, state this as being the case 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 39 
 
 in their history of her last moments), or 
 whether, which I think far more probable, 
 seeing that no scissors or other implement 
 whereby she could have cut her hair with 
 her own hands was allowed her, her hair 
 was cut by the executioner — which is the 
 view taken by Mons. de Saint Amand — 
 it was the '' derniere toilette,'' as the French 
 style this last preparation of the victim for 
 the scaffold. According to Madame Bault's 
 account, the Queen's hair was cut by Sanson 
 after he had tied her arms, — arms " that were 
 not born for bondage," — behind her back. 
 The Queen, looking back, could see him 
 placing the shorn tresses in his pocket. 
 "This I saw," adds Madame Bault, "and 
 I would I had never seen that sight," — a 
 
I40 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 sight which, she might well say, she " could 
 never forget." 
 
 There seems some reason to believe that 
 even at this last hour an attempt would 
 still be made to rescue the Queen. Some 
 scheme of delivering the Queen on her way 
 to the Place de la Revolution appears to 
 have been concocted, but, like all the attempts 
 made to save her, it only ended disastrously. 
 Two people were arrested by the police — a 
 woman named Fournier and a young wigmaker, 
 Basset by name. They were both executed. 
 A strange circumstance was, that immediately 
 after the Queen's execution a man named 
 Maingot was found beneath the guillotine dip- 
 ping his handkerchief in the Queen's blood. 
 He had a pink in his mouth, which some have 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 141 
 
 thought was a rallying-badge, and possibly he 
 was connected with De Rougeville and his 
 friends. The authorities, however, had taken 
 every precaution to make even the most de- 
 termined attempt at a rescue impossible. As 
 early as five that morning nearly all the troops 
 in Paris were under arms; the roll of the 
 drum was heard through all the sections ; the 
 streets along which lay the route of the 
 Queen's passage were lined with troops, of 
 whom, at seven o'clock, thirty thousand were 
 afoot. The bridges were guarded with 
 cannon, the gunners standing by ready with 
 lighted matches; artillery were also placed on 
 the principal open places and points of junc- 
 tion. At ten o'clock no carriage was allowed 
 in any of the streets that lie between the 
 
142 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 Conciergerie and the Place de la Revolution ; 
 and all Paris was patrolled. All this military 
 display, which sounds as if an enemy's army 
 were at the very gates of Paris, had been 
 brought out merely to see a woman die ! The 
 whole town seemed to be in the streets that 
 morning. It was thickest in front of the Con- 
 ciergerie, before the yard through which the 
 prisoner would pass. Before those beautiful 
 iron gates, on which the royal arms of France 
 and the golden lilies are conspicuous, every 
 window near had its group of spectators ; the 
 very house-tops were covered with the people. 
 The crowd was immense here, but in the vast 
 space around the guillotine it was still greater. 
 The terraces of the Tuileries gardens were 
 crowded — so were the Champs Elysees; and 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 43 
 
 wherever a glimpse of the guillotine could be 
 obtained, there the people waited. Every 
 window along the Rue St. Honore held spec- 
 tators, although the people had been warned 
 not to appear at their windows. 
 
 Eleven o'clock strikes. The wretched open 
 cart, with its single horse, its plank the only 
 seat, without even the luxury of straw, has 
 been already driven into the yard of the 
 prison. In fifteen minutes more there is a 
 stir among the people; all eyes are now fixed 
 on the barred gates on the right at the end 
 of the courtyard, and the Queen ascends the 
 prison steps. 
 
 On seeing the cart she made an involuntary 
 pause, expecting that she would have had a 
 covered carriage to go in, as had been allowed 
 
144 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 the King; but the Revolution since the 21st 
 of January had gone on apace, and no more 
 exception would be made for her than for the 
 other victims of its judgments. The people 
 seemed to approve of the Queen's hands being 
 tied behind her, and Sanson made a point 
 of displaying the cords. Still, with proud 
 step and undaunted mien, Marie Antoinette 
 advances. In a moment more she reaches 
 the steps placed against the back of the cart, 
 and at first seats herself with her face to the 
 horse. Sanson has placed his hand beneath 
 her elbow to help her up those unsteady steps ; 
 she thanks him with a .look, and gets in 
 alone. Seeing she has placed herself facing the 
 horse, he tells her to alter her position, and she 
 now seats herself with her back to the horse. 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 45 
 
 Girard the priest, in laic dress, sits next her ; 
 Sanson is behind the Queen. Both he and 
 his assistant have their three-cornered hats 
 under their arms. " On that occasion," as De 
 Goncourt remarks, "the only people who be 
 haved with decency were the executioners." 
 
 The via dolorosa of the Queen was a long 
 one — the distance not great ; but in order to 
 make Marie Antoinette, as one of the Jacobins 
 said, " drink long of death," the carriage was 
 made to go at a foot's pace. During the first 
 part of the road traversed the mob appear to 
 have been too much amazed on seeing this 
 white-robed figure, so simple and yet so grand in 
 its forlornness — a woman whom many of them 
 had only beheld formerly through the windows 
 of a gilded coach led by eight horses and sur- 
 
 10 
 
146 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 rounded by a brilliant body-guard of cavalry — 
 now in this miserable cart which slowly jolted 
 over the rough pavement, with the public exe- 
 cutioner holding her imprisoned hands, to do 
 more than stare, and not till the procession 
 had got as far down as the Church of Saint- 
 Roch did the insults begin. Near this place a 
 scoundrel named Grammont, formerly an actor, 
 with the recommendation of having assisted 
 at the massacre of the loyalist prisoners at 
 Orleans and Versailles — he is reported to have 
 drank wine out of the freshly-cleaved skull of 
 one of the unfortunate people he had murdered 
 — led the way, prancing on horseback, and 
 inciting the mob to insult the Queen. Gram- 
 mont had taken the pains to place some of the 
 lowest of the rabble at various points of van- 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 147 
 
 tage, and when the Queen was led slowly by 
 them, these wretches, who had been liberally 
 supplied by Grammont with spirits, yelled and 
 shouted and mouthed at her. Grammont, 
 with his sword drawn, cursed the crowd for not 
 being more violent. That Marie Antoinette 
 expected a terrible ordeal ere death released 
 her is shown by her having asked one of the 
 gendarmes in her prison whether he thought 
 she would be allowed to reach the scaffold 
 without being torn to pieces on the way. The 
 man did his best to reassure her. 
 
 The line of this death-drive — this slow 
 agony of an unfortunate woman — can still be 
 followed. Crossing the Pont-au-Change, the 
 quay is followed as far as the Louvre ; then 
 passing along the Rue-du-Roule, the long 
 
148 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 winding street of Saint-Honore is reached. 
 It is there, in the narrowest part, by the 
 Church of Saint-Roch, as it still exists, that 
 the best idea of what this sight must have 
 been on that day can be judged, for most of 
 the houses are older than the first Revolution. 
 It was from a window of one of the houses 
 in this street the painter David drew a 
 terrible outline of the -Queen seated in the 
 cart. David's participation in some of the 
 bloodiest scenes of that time will render his 
 memory ever odious. He seems, from personal 
 spite, to have taken an intense dislike to the 
 poor Queen, who was not an admirer of his 
 severe and hard manner, and he lost no 
 opportunity of revenging himself. He was 
 one of the infamous inquisitors who examined 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 149 
 
 the royal children on the charges invented 
 by Hebert, and one must regret that no 
 worse fate befell him than exile when the 
 Bourbons were restored. Although a cruel 
 and vindictive caricature, there is enough in 
 the hasty outline sketch David made at that 
 moment to give one an idea of how the 
 Queen appeared. She is described by eye- 
 witnesses as being pale as death, with only 
 a hectic flush at her cheek-bones, the eyes 
 injected with blood, probably caused by so 
 many sleepless nights and intense suffering. 
 Only once during that long road to death 
 did the Queen display any emotion. A little 
 child held up by its mother in front of the 
 Church of the Oratory kissed its little hand 
 to the Queen, who burst into tears. Her own 
 
I50 LAST BAYS OF 
 
 child, her little Dauphin, must have then been 
 uppermost in her heart. 
 
 Owing to the difficulty the Queen had 
 to keep her place on the narrow plank on 
 which she sat, her head seemed strained and 
 rigid, but her eyes followed the crowd, and 
 even seemed attracted by the tricolour flags 
 that were displayed from out the windows 
 and in the balconies. Some suppose that 
 she had been told to look at a certain house, 
 in which a priest not assermente would be 
 placed, and from which he would give her his 
 benediction. But this seems to me one of the 
 legends that were invented by those anxious to 
 make believe that the last offices of the Roman 
 Church were, even in so distant a manner, ac- 
 corded her. The different inscriptions on the 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 151 
 
 buildings, too, attracted her attention. The 
 oft-repeated " Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," so 
 veritably carried out by that Government, 
 must have seemed strange to one who had 
 known the real meaning of that lying phrase. 
 On passing, the Palais Royal — now called 
 " Palais Egalite " — arrests her attention. To 
 please the mob, several halts were made, so 
 as to enable the crowd to insult her. " Mes- 
 salina," " Fredegonde," are the terms in which 
 the street-viragos hail her. Before the Jaco- 
 bin Club, which bore the inscription " Depot 
 of Republican arms to destroy tyrants," a 
 long halt was made, and the cries and howl- 
 inffs of the mob rend the air. At the corner 
 of the Rue Royale, near Robespierre's house, a 
 triple rank of national guards were stationed. 
 
152 LAST DAYS OF 
 
 At length, after an hour of this torment, 
 the Place de la Revolution was reached, and 
 with it the term of the Queen's sufferings. 
 Passing between the noble buildings of the 
 " Garde Meuble " and the Admiralty, the 
 cart turned to the left, and when half across 
 the Square the guillotine is reached. When 
 Louis XVI. was executed, that Instrument 
 stood between where now rises the Luxor 
 obelisk and the Rue Royale ; but for the 
 Queen the place has been changed, and the 
 hideous narrow blood-coloured beams stand 
 between that spot and the gardens of the 
 Tuilerles In the centre. Where formerly had 
 stood the equestrian statue of Louis XV. now 
 stood a huge plaster monument of Liberty. 
 Troops surround the guillotine, the crowd 
 
MARIE ANTOINETTE. 1 53 
 
 is dense all around, and even among the 
 branches of the autumnal-tinted chestnut trees 
 of the royal gardens are many people. 
 
 With one last look at the great dome of 
 the palace, and after a short prayer, the Queen 
 rapidly mounted the scaffold steps; she does 
 this without assistance, and with extraordinary 
 firmness. 
 
 She appears to have spoken but once — a 
 few words of apology to Sanson, on whose 
 foot she had trod. Even in death her natural 
 courtesy could not desert her. She then, with 
 a movement of her head, threw off her cap, 
 and is prepared for the fatal stroke. 
 
 A little after twelve, and her sufferings were 
 at length finished. 
 
154 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 That night the following entry was written 
 by the gravedigger Toly, belonging to the 
 cemetery of the Madeleine and of the Ville 
 d'Eveque : — 
 
 For the bier of the Widow Capet, . 6 livres. 
 For the grave and the gravediggers, . 25 „ 
 
 University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 
 
7M « ^ 
 

 ,<p %> 
 
 
 
 
 
 cP\ 
 
 
 
 .^^-^ ^ 
 
 
 .4 ^ 
 
 N- 
 
 a^' 
 
 N^^"- 
 
 V^ 
 
 .^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .^^ 
 
 ).^ ^ .°., 
 
 V^'^.-o^.^ 
 
 •p^ .• 
 
 .9 
 
 Ho^ 
 
 
 
 
 - .o,^' 
 

 
 Cl^ 
 
 Q* 
 "'-%> 
 
 \<^^ 
 
 
 V ^ ^ • " ^ 
 
 
 
 ^\ %/■ ; 
 
 
 
 
 
v. I 
 i 
 
 ';i^iiifi