Her despair.
Her friends gathered around her. They implored her to think of her children, and for their sake to prize a life she could no longer prize for her own. The poignancy of her grief gradually subsided into the calm of despair. A sleepless night lingered slowly away. The darkness and the gloom of a prison settled down upon her soul. The morning dawned drearily. A band of rough and merciless agents from the Revolutionary Assembly came to her with the almost welcome intelligence that in two days she was to be led to the Conciergerie, and from thence to her execution. These tidings would have been joyful to Josephine were it not for her children. A mother's love clung to the orphans, and it was with pain inexpressible that she thought of leaving them alone in this tempestuous world—a world made so stormy, so woeful, by man's inhumanity to his fellow-man.
Preparations for the execution of Josephine.
She becomes cheerful.
Credulity of Josephine.
The day preceding the one assigned for her execution arrived. The numerous friends of Josephine in the prison hung around her with tears. The heartless jailer came and took away her mattress, saying, with a sneer, that she would need it no longer, as her head was soon to repose upon the soft pillow of the guillotine. It is reported that, as the hour of execution drew nearer, Josephine became not only perfectly calm, but even cheerful in spirit. She looked affectionately upon the weeping group gathered around her, and, recalling at the moment the prediction of the aged negress, gently smiling, said, "We have no cause for alarm my friends; I am not to be executed. It is written in the decrees of Fate that I am yet to be Queen of France." Some of her friends thought that the suppressed anguish of her heart had driven her to delirium, and they wept more bitterly. But one of the ladies, Madame d'Aiguillon, was a little irritated at pleasantry which she deemed so ill timed. With something like resentment, she asked, "Why, then, madame, do you not appoint your household?" "Ah! that is true," Josephine replied. "I had forgotten. Well, you, my dear, shall be my maid of honor. I promise you the situation." They both lived to witness the strange fulfillment of this promise. Josephine, however, who, from the circumstances of her early life, was inclined to credulity, afterward declared that at the time her mind reposed in the full confidence that in some way her life would be saved, and that the prediction of the negress would be virtually realized.
The unexpected deliverance.
A miraculous change.
Deliverance to the captives.
The shades of night settled down around the gloomy convent, enveloping in their folds the despairing hearts which thronged this abode of woe. Suddenly the most exultant shout of joy burst from every lip, and echoed along through corridors, and dungeons, and grated cells. There was weeping and fainting for rapture inexpressible. The prisoners leaped into each other's arms, and, frantic with happiness, clung together in that long and heartfelt embrace which none can appreciate but those who have been companions in woe. Into the blackness of their midnight there had suddenly burst the blaze of noonday. What caused this apparently miraculous change? The iron-hearted jailer had passed along, announcing, in coarsest phrase, that Robespierre was guillotined. There had been a new revolution. The tyrant had fallen. The prisons which he had filled with victims were to be emptied of their captives.