When the Girondists fell, she knew all hope of life for herself was at an end. She was then removed to the prison whence Marie Antoinette went to the scaffold—nay, she was imprisoned in the adjoining cell; and here she passed her days, watching the fragment of sky she could see through the bars of her prison, or admiring the little bunches of flowers the gaoler’s good-hearted wife sent to her dungeon almost daily.
She was tried for being the wife of Roland, and the friend of the Girondists. She was proud of the accusation, declared herself to be so, and she heard her condemnation to death with a calm bearing and a smiling face.
“I thank you,” she said, “that you think me worthy to share the fate of great and good men.”
That same day she was placed in the last of a number of carts, her only companion being an old man. Her beauty was more than radiant, seated so near trembling age.
She wore a white dress, and her long black hair streamed down her back.
Near the scaffold had been erected a colossal statue of Liberty. When she ascended the scaffold, she bowed to the statue, and cried, “Oh Liberty, how much crime is committed in your name!”
But she had shown her woman’s tenderness at the foot of the scaffold. She said to her companion, “Go first, that you may not see me die. Let me save you that pain.”
She died quite fearlessly.
The next day, some peasants, driving home their flocks, found the dead body of a man, a sword-stick blade through his heart. The position of the remains proved suicide, effected by putting the sword-handle against a tree, when the sufferer flung himself upon the point. A paper found upon the dead man contained these words:—