"Permit me," said Madame Roland, "after the manner of the ancients, to scatter some rose-leaves from my bouquet in your glass."
Vergniaud held out his glass, and some leaves were scattered on the wine. He then said, in words strongly prophetic of their fate, "We should quaff, not roses, but cypress-leaves, in our wine to-night. In drinking to a republic, stained at its birth with the blood of September, who knows that we do not drink to our own death? No matter; were this wine my blood, I would drain it to liberty and equality."
To this all responded with the words Vive la République. But a few months elapsed ere almost every individual then present perished on the scaffold.
BATTLE OF JEMAPPES.
In the mean time Dumouriez, with thirty-five thousand men, was pursuing a division of the retreating Allies, consisting of twenty-five thousand Austrians, under General Clairfayt, through Belgium. On the 4th of November he overtook them strongly intrenched upon the heights of Jemappes. One day was consumed in bringing up his forces and arranging his batteries for the assault. Sixty thousand men were now arrayed for a deadly strife. One hundred pieces of cannon were in battery to hurl into the dense ranks destruction and death. On the morning of the 6th the storm of war commenced. All the day long it raged with pitiless fury. In the evening ten thousand of the dying and the dead covered the ground, and the Austrians were every where retreating in dismay. This new victory caused great rejoicing in Paris, and inspired the revolutionary party with new courage.
The day at length arrived for the trial of the king. It was the 11th of December. For four months the royal family, with ever-alternating hopes and fears, which had been gradually deepening into despair, had now endured the rigors of captivity. The king, with that wonderful equanimity which distinguished him through all these days of trial, immediately upon taking possession of his gloomy abode introduced system into the employment of his time.
His room was on the third story. He usually rose at six o'clock, shaved himself, and carefully dressed his hair. He then entered a small room or closet, which opened from his sleeping-room, and engaged in devotional reading and prayer for an hour. He was not allowed to close the door, for a municipal officer ever stationed in his room was enjoined never to allow the king to leave his sight. He then read till nine o'clock, during which time his faithful servant, Clery, put the room in order, and spread the table for the breakfast of the royal family. At nine o'clock the queen, the children, and Madame Elizabeth came up from the rooms which they occupied below to breakfast.