Louis saw his father but once more. It was in the evening of Sunday, the 20th of January. The crier, who came into the street at seven o’clock, proclaimed the sentence that Louis Capet was to be executed the next day.
The family were at last permitted to see the king; and at half-past eight were told that he was ready. The queen took Louis by the hand, and led him downstairs, the princesses following. It appears that the guards had some idea that the king would attempt suicide; for they would not allow him to have a knife at his dinner; and they now would not lose sight of him, even while meeting his family. They would not have allowed the door to be shut, but that it was a glass door, through which they could look, on any alarm. So far from the king having thought of suicide, it is now believed by most people that he allowed himself to be persuaded by his counsel and friends that there was not really much danger of his execution taking place, and that he would be permitted, at the last moment, to appeal to the Primary Assemblies, where an appeal would be successful. This seems confirmed by his conduct on the scaffold. He was, as he had been through life, deceived and mistaken; and the moment of his being undeceived was one of dreadful agony of mind. It deprived him of all dignity and fortitude; and his struggles were such that it required the strength of three executioners to overpower him, and fulfil the sentence. It is to be hoped that his family never knew this; and the mass of the crowd did not see what happened on the scaffold; but some who did see the whole, have proved beyond a doubt that Louis the Sixteenth showed, at last, no more dignity in his death than in his life.
How much hope he imparted to his family during their evening interview can now never be known; but his legal advisers and his servants gave him such abundant assurances that the sentence could never be really executed upon a king, that the hopes of his family were probably sustained by their words. Not a sound, however, was heard by Cléry outside the door. The king sat between his wife and sister, and kept Louis standing between his knees,—the Princess Royal sitting nearly in front. There was much weeping; and most that was said was by the king. He desired his boy to harbour no revenge against the authors of his death, and then gave him his blessing.
When the peasant-child sees his father dying on his fever-bed, and knows that the question is in the heart of both parents, what is to become of the widow and her children, he may feel his little heart bursting with fear and sorrow, and may think that no one can be more unhappy than he. But Louis was more unhappy. Here was his father, in the full vigour of his years, about to die a violent death, amidst the hatred of millions of men who, if all had done right, should have been attached to him, and have defended his life at the peril of their own. For the peasant-child there is comfort in prospect. His father’s grave is respected in the churchyard; the neighbours are kind; there is the consolation of work for those who survive, and the free air, and the spring flowers, and the mowing, and the harvest, and all the pleasures which cannot be withheld from those who live at liberty in the country. For the princely child there were none of these comforts. As far as he could see, his father and mother had no friends; he and his family were in a dismal prison, with insulting enemies about them, and no prospect of any change for the better, when his father should have been thus violently torn away. Never, perhaps, was there a more miserable child than Louis was now.
The queen much wished to remain with the king all night; but the king saw that it was better that their strength should not be thus worn-out in grief, and he said that he needed some hours of rest and stillness. He promised that the family should come to him in the morning: and they therefore left him at a quarter past ten, having spent an hour and three-quarters with him. He told Cléry that he never intended to keep this promise, and should spare them and himself the affliction of such an interview. The queen chose to put Louis to bed, as usual; but had hardly strength to do it. She then threw herself, dressed, upon her own bed, where the princesses heard her shivering and sobbing with cold and grief, all night long. The whole family were dressed by six, in expectation of being sent for by the king; and when the door opened, in a quarter of an hour, they thought the summons was come; but it was only an attendant, looking for a prayer-book, as a priest was going to say mass in the king’s apartment. Then they waited hour after hour, and do not seem to have suspected that the king would not keep his promise. At a little after ten, the firing of the artillery, and the shouts in the streets of “Long live the Republic,” told them but too plainly that all was over.
The melancholy life they led went on through the rest of the winter and spring with little variety. The parapet of the leads was raised, and every chink stopped up, to prevent the family seeing anything, or being seen when they walked; so that his daily exercise could have been but little of an amusement to the poor boy. On the 25th of March, he was snatched up from sleep, in the middle of the night, in order that his bed might be searched, as it was believed that his mother and aunt carried on a correspondence with people without, by some secret means. Nothing was found in Louis’s bed; and only a tradesman’s address, and a stick of sealing-wax, in any of the apartments. The princesses certainly contrived to conceal some pencils; for they had some remaining in the following October. While the king was separated from them, they corresponded with him by putting small notes into the middle of balls of cotton, which were found by Cléry in the linen-press, occasionally, and which would hardly have excited any suspicion if they had been seen there by the most watchful of the gaolers. It is probable that the princesses communicated by the same method with people out of doors, when their linen went out or was brought in. It certainly appears that they did carry on a correspondence by some means. No one would blame them for this: but neither, when the situation and the fears of the new republicans are considered, assailed and invaded as they were by the powerful friends of royalty, can we wonder at the frequency and strictness of their searches, while certain that their orders were evaded by the prisoners.
On the 9th of May, poor Louis was taken ill with fever. It was a very serious illness, and lasted nearly a month; and he never was in good health again. The want of proper air, exercise, and play, and the dull life he led among melancholy companions, were quite enough to destroy the health of any boy. He was tenderly nursed by his mother and aunt, and his sister played with him; but there was no peace in their minds, and no mirth in their faces, to cheer his young heart. One anecdote shows how sad their manners were now. Tison’s wife, who did some of the work of their chambers, went mad, and talked to herself in a way so ridiculous, that the Princess Royal could not help laughing. This made the queen and Princess Elizabeth look at her with pleasure—it was so long since they had seen her laugh! And yet this poor girl who never laughed was then only fifteen years old, and her brother not yet nine.