Upon the evening of the 3rd the order was executed.
It was but just dark when the guard challenged a patrol at the gate of the Tower; the patrol was the escort of six Municipals who had come from the authorities of the city to take the person of the child.
The women within the prison had had no warning. The same Fate which had been kind to them in making a silence all around their lives during these dreadful months and in hiding from them the dangers that rose around was cruel to them now, leaving them unprepared for this sudden and tearing wound. There was a candle in the room and by its light the little girl, the Princess Royal, read out aloud—from a book of Prayers, it is said—to her aunt and her mother, the Queen. These two women sewed as they listened; they were mending the clothes of the children. The little boy slept in his bed in the same room: his mother had hung a shawl to hide the light from his eyes. Save for his regular breathing there was no sound to interrupt the high, monotonous voice of the little girl as she read on, when suddenly her elders heard upon the floors below the advent of new authorities and of a message. The steps of six men came louder up the stone stairs, the doors opened as though to a military command, and the Princesses saw, crowding in the corner of the small room, a group whose presence they did not understand, though among them the Queen recognised Michonis. The reading stopped, the women turned round but did not rise, the child stirred in his sleep. One of that group spoke first before the Queen could question them. “We have come,” he said, “by order of the House, to tell you that the separation of Capet’s son from his mother has been voted.”
Then the Queen rose. Never until now had she abandoned before any but her husband, or perhaps in the very intimacy of the Council, the restraint which she believed her rank to demand. The violence of her blood had been apparent in many a petulant and many an undignified gesture; she had raised her voice against many a deputation; she had sneered more than once against women of a poorer kind; she had thrown at La Fayette the keys which he demanded on their return to the palace after the flight to Varennes; but she had never yet lost command of herself. Upon this terrible night, for the only time in her life, she did completely lose all her self-command. Something confused her like a madness, and all the intensity of her spirit came out nakedly in defence of the child.
ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY IN CAMBON’S
HANDWRITING, DIRECTING THE DAUPHIN TO BE SEPARATED FROM HIS MOTHER
She stood up by the little bed; all her complexity of pride and all her training in intrigue deserted her; she cried out; she took refuge in such weapons as the women of the poor, whom no law protects, use to defend their sanctities. Her voice rang, became shrill and shrieked in the little room, violent and rising; she threatened death; next moment she implored. Her little daughter and her sister-in-law caught her methods. They joined in the imprecations and in the prayers. The child was awakened by the noise, by the shuffling of so many awkward and heavy feet in the doorway, by the passionate outcries around him; he awoke and gazed; then when he saw his mother he clung to her, and she kissed him repeatedly and held him as though he were again part of herself and as though none could take him from her without taking her life also, and all the while her prayers and execrations showered upon the armed men as they stood hesitating apart and waiting.
How long this scene continued we cannot tell; it may have been the best part of an hour.[[33]] At last some one of the deputation found decision and cried, “Why will you make this scene? No one wants to kill your son! Let him go freely; we could take him—if you force us to that!”
[33]. The Duchesse d’Angoulême, the little girl then present, said, years after, that it lasted a full hour, but such memories are untrustworthy.
She lifted the little boy up and dressed him, his eyes still dazed with sleep. She lingered over him with conventional benedictions, repeated and prolonged. Her hands could not let him go. Fearing some further violence, a member of the deputation muttered a suggestion for the guard; but the Queen’s active passion was exhausted, she would be violent no more. She herself, perhaps, loosened his little hands from her dress and said, “Come, you must obey....” Then they took him away; the great door was shut upon him. The women within, trembling beside the cot, could still hear the child pleading with a lessening voice in the distance until another door clanged below and the rest of the night was silent.