On the evening of the same day, one of his gaolers asked the King brutally, if he knew that he was living in a republic.
“I have heard it,” he replied; “and I have prayed that the republic may deal justly with my country. I have never placed myself between the people and their happiness.”
So far, the King had been allowed to wear his sword and his heraldic orders.
“You must know,” said his gaoler, “that the republic has suppressed these baubles; so take them off. You are now but a citizen, as we are, and must be as we are; yet, what you want, ask the republic for, and you shall not be denied.”
“I thank you,” said the King calmly. “I want for nothing.”
Very calmly, he continued his interrupted reading.
Amongst the books he read at this time were “The Life and death of Charles I, of England,” and the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”
The Convention, however, had not behaved illiberally to the captives. The members assigned twenty thousand pounds to their use; but very little was really expended in the direction it was intended to go. The royal family were wretchedly off for clothes. They had borrowed here and there; and the Queen herself employed many hours daily in mending and patching the clothes of the family, which had been much torn during the day which ended in the imprisonment of Louis and his family in the Temple.
The English ambassador, in fact, was the chief donor of the clothes which enabled the royal family to be the possessors of a mere change of linen.
It is said that the wretched gaolers vied with each other in making the fallen captives shed tears. That man who succeeded was envied by his comrades. Well has it been said that the success of a revolution which was the result of generations of misgovernment, had fallen heavily upon those royal personages who had least helped to produce the national hate of royalty, while that victory had of itself driven the vanquishing people into madness.