The meal occupied an hour. The royal family then all descended to the queen's room, where they passed the day. The king employed himself in instructing his son, giving him lessons in geography, which was a favorite study of the king; teaching him to draw and color maps, and to recite choice passages from Corneille and Racine. The queen assumed the education of her daughter, while her own hands and those of Madame Elizabeth were busy in needle-work, knitting, and working tapestry.
At one o'clock, when the weather was fine, the royal family were conducted by four municipal officers into the spacious but dilapidated garden for exercise and the open air. The officials who guarded the king were frequently changed. Sometimes they chanced to be men of humane character, who, though devoted to the disinthrallment of France from the terrible despotism of ages, still pitied the king as the victim of circumstances, and treated him with kindness and respect. But more generally these men were vulgar and rabid Jacobins, who exulted in the opportunity of wreaking upon the king the meanest revenge. They chalked upon the walls of the prison, "The guillotine is permanent and ready for the tyrant Louis." "Madame Veto shall swing." "The little wolves must be strangled." Under a gallows, to which a figure was suspended, was inscribed the words, "Louis taking an air-bath." From such ribald insults the monarch had no protection.
A burly brutal wretch, named Rocher, was one of the keepers of the Tower. He went swaggering about with a bunch of enormous keys clattering at his belt, seeming to glory in his power of annoying, by petty insults, a king and a queen. When the royal family were going out into the garden he would go before them to unlock the doors. Making a great demonstration in rattling his keys, and affecting much difficulty in finding the right one, all the party would be kept waiting while he made all possible delay and noise in drawing the bolts and swinging open the ponderous doors. At the side of the last door he not unfrequently stationed himself with his pipe in his mouth, and puffed tobacco-smoke into the faces of the king, the queen, and the children. Some of the guards stationed around would burst into insulting laughter in view of these indignities, which the king endured with meekness which seems supernatural.
LOUIS XVI. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.
The recital of such conduct makes the blood boil in one's veins, and leads one almost to detest the very name of liberty. But then we must not forget that it was despotism which formed these hideous characters; that, age after age and century after century, kings and nobles had been trampling upon the people, crushing their rights, lacerating their heart-strings, dooming fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, by millions upon millions, to beggary, degradation, and woe. It was time for the people to rise at every hazard and break these chains. And while humanity must weep over the woes of Louis XVI. and his unhappy household, humanity can not forget that there are other families and other hearts who claim her sympathies, and that this very Louis XVI. was at this very time doing every thing in his power, by the aid of the armies of foreign despots, to bring the millions of France again under the sway of the most merciless despotism. And it can not be questioned that, had kings and nobles regained their power, they would have wreaked a more terrible vengeance upon the re-enslaved people than the people wreaked upon them.
For an hour the royal family continued walking in the garden. From the roofs of the adjacent houses and the higher windows they could be seen. Every day at noon these roofs and windows were crowded by those anxious to obtain a view of the melancholy group of captives. Frequently they were cheered by gestures of affection from unknown friends. Tender words were occasionally unrolled in capital letters, or a flower to which a pebble was attached would fall at their feet. These tokens of love, slight as they were, came as a balm to their lacerated hearts. So highly did they prize them, that regardless of rain, cold, and snow, and the intolerable insults of their guards, they looked forward daily with eagerness to their garden walk. They recognized particular localities as belonging to their friends, saying, "such a house is devoted to us; such a story is for us; such a room is loyal; such a window friendly."
At two o'clock the royal family returned to the king's room, where dinner was served. After dinner the king took a nap, while the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the young princess employed themselves with their needles, and the dauphin played some game with Clery, whose name should be transmitted with honor to posterity as faithful in misfortune. When the king awoke from his nap he usually read aloud to his family for an hour or two until supper-time. Soon after supper, the queen, with her children and Madame Elizabeth, retired to their rooms for the night. With hearts bound together by these terrible griefs, they never parted but with a tender and sorrowful adieu.[376]
Such was the monotonous life of the royal family during the four months they occupied the Temple before the trial of the king. But almost every day of their captivity some new act of rigor was enforced upon them. As the armies of the Allies drew nearer, and city after city was falling before their bombardments, and Paris was in a phrensy of terror, apprehensions of a conspiracy of the king with the Royalists, and of their rising and aiding the invaders with an outburst of civil war, led to the adoption of precautions most irksome to the captives.