The Bench declared the examination of the witnesses closed. For something like an hour that bronzed and hollow-faced man next by her, Fouquier Tinville, put forward the case for the Government; he was careful to avoid the mad evidence Hébert had supplied. When he sat down, the Defence spoke last—as has since Rome been the custom or rather the obvious justice of French procedure; so that the last words a Jury may hear shall be words for the prisoner at the bar—but this was not a trial, though all the forms of trial were observed. Chauveau-Lagarde spoke first, his colleague next. When they had ceased they were arrested and forbidden to leave the building, lest certain words the Queen had whispered should mean some communication with the invader.
The summing up (for summing up was still permitted, and a century of Revolutionary effort was to pass before the pressure of the Bench upon the Jury should be gradually destroyed) was what the angers of that night expected and received. It was three o’clock in the morning before the four questions were put to the Jury. Four questions drawn indeed from the Indictment but avoiding its least proved or least provable clauses. Had there been relations between the Executive and the foreign enemies of the State, and promises of aid to facilitate the advance of their armies? If so, was Marie Antoinette of Austria proved to have been privy to that plan?
The Jury left the Hall. A murmur of tongues loosened rose all around. The prisoner was led out beyond the doors of the chamber. For one long unexpected hour she was so detained while the Jury were still absent; then a signal was given to her guards and they led her in.
Oct. 16, 1793. In Paris, 4 a.m.
The cold violence of formal law still dominated the lawyers. Herman put forth the common exhortation of judges against applause or blame. He read to her the conclusions of the Jury: they were affirmative upon every point of the four. He asked her with that same cold violence of formality, after the Public Prosecutor had demanded the penalty of death set down for such actions as hers in the new Penal Code, whether she had anything to say against her sentence. She shook her head.
She was at the end of human things. She stood and saw the Judges upon the Bench conferring for a moment, she stood to hear her sentence read to her, and as she heard it she watched them in their strange new head-dress all plumes, and she fingered upon the rail before her with the gestures ladies learn in fingering the keys: she swept her fingers gently as though over the keys of an instrument, and soon the reading of the sentence was done and they led her away. It was past four o’clock in the morning.
On the terrace of his castle in Germany that night George of Hesse saw the White Lady pass, the Ghost without a face that is the warning of the Hapsburgs, and the hair of his head stood up.
FIRST PAGE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE’S LAST LETTER