The name of one had been already written down by Princess Elizabeth, whose confessor this Abbe Edgeworth was.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
THE PARALLEL TO CHARLES I.
This worthy priest, of English origin, had escaped the September massacres and was hiding out at Choisy, under the name of Essex, as the Princess Elizabeth knew, and where to find him.
He came to the call, though he believed that he would be killed within an hour of the dreadful scene.
He was not to quit the prisoner till he quitted the world.
The king was allowed to take farewell of his family in the dining-room, where the glass door allowed the guards still to keep him in sight. They knew the trial had taken place, but not the particulars, with which he supplied them. He dwelt particularly on the fact that Petion had not pressed for the death penalty, and that Gilbert had voted to spare his life.
Heaven owed the poor prisoner some comfort, and it came in the love of the queen.
As has been seen in our story, the queen easily let the picturesque side of life attract her. She had that vivid imagination which makes women imprudent even more than disposed; she had been imprudent all her life in her friendship and in her loving.
Her captivity saved her in a moral point of view; she returned to the pure and holy domestic virtues from which youthful passions had led her; and as she could do nothing without extravagance, she fell to loving passionately, in his distress, this royal consort whose vulgar traits were all she could see in the days of felicity. In their first disasters she saw a dullard, almost cowardly, without impulse or resolution; at the temple she began to see that the wife had not only misjudged the husband, but the queen the monarch. She beheld one calm and patient, meek but firm under outrages; all the worldly dryness in her was melted, and turned to the profit of better sentiments.