Prisons were not large enough to contain prisoners, and all the confiscated churches were converted into gaols. Death was decreed for almost every act of life—certainly for every act of pity.
A hundred men, less two, were beheaded in sixty days in Paris alone.
The Queen was too noble a victim to escape.
The Convention suddenly ordered her trial, and commanded her separation from the two children.
Now all the lethargy which has possessed her since the King’s death departs, and she becomes as a lioness fighting for her young.
By this time, all the beauty of Marie Antoinette had vanished, and there remained a very broken old woman, aged about a little more than thirty, with very scanty white hair, falling in patches from an almost bald head. The body, as the soul, had shrunken—a skeleton remained, covered with mere skin.
This was the Queen, who leapt into life when her dulled hearing comprehended that she was to be separated from her children. They had but the mercy only to remove the son.
The boy clung to his mother, who lost all dignity, dug her nails into the child’s flesh, and called upon the men to kill them both.
For two hours this lasted, and then she became a woman again—a mother; and dressing him to look as smart as possible, she gave him up with her own hands to his gaoler, Simon, who took him at once to the room where the child was destined to die. For two days and nights the child lay upon the floor, taking neither food nor drink.
The Queen never took her son in her arms. He was to outlive her but a little time, and then die of sheer ill-usage and neglect.