“True,” said the King, his head falling.
But the name of a man in those ranks was to be made illustrious amongst pitying and tender-hearted men. The King, looking up, glanced rapidly along the two lines of faces to find one pitying look. His eyes rested upon one Gobeau, a man with a frightful name, but possessed of a far better heart.
“I pray you give this paper to my wife.”
Gobeau hesitated, and looked from the King to his comrades, from his comrades back to Louis.
“You may read it—if you will. ’Tis but my wishes, which I trust the Commune may read.”
The man Gobeau asked the consent of his comrades, and then took the paper.
The morning was very cold, and to complete the resemblance between the fates of the two beheaded Kings, Charles I of England, and Louis XVI of France, exactly as Charles’s valet put a cloak round his master, so that he should not appear to tremble at the scaffold, so Cléry, knowing nothing of the parallel, put a cloak about his master.
Both kings were beheaded towards the end of January.
“I do not require a cloak,” he said. “Give me my hat.”