Alas! When Louis died all pity had expired; with her death, all France was to gasp with thirst for blood.
She mounted the cart—her hands having been bound behind her, and in the midst of a raging crowd. The cart swayed, and she could scarcely keep her seat on the plank.
She grew red and pale by turns, as she was dragged through the mob. The patience and pity exhibited by the King she could not imitate. Her lips were bitter each moment; but she never took her dry, hot eyes from the raging people.
Suddenly, her head falls humbly, and, her hands being tied, she makes the sign of the cross by three motions of the head.
Her pride had passed with that unseen blessing from the house on her way to execution. When the Palace of the Tuileries came in view—the place where she had spent nearly half her life—tears fell down her face.
A few turns of the wheels, and she was at the foot of the scaffold.
Reaching the place, accidentally she trod upon one of the executioners’ feet.
“Pardon me,” she said, in a sweet, courtly voice.
She knelt for an instant, rose, stretched her neck towards the distant towers of the Temple, and cried, “Good-bye, my children! I am going to your father.”