Marie Antoinette in the Temple.—Conspiracies for the Rescue of the Royal Family.—The young Dauphin torn from his Mother.—Phrensy of the Queen.—She is removed to the Conciergerie.—Indignities and Woes.—The Queen led to Trial.—Letter to her Sister.—The Execution of the Queen.—Madame Elizabeth led to Trial and Execution.—Fate of the Princess and the Dauphin.
The populace now demanded the head of Marie Antoinette, whom they had long been taught implacably to hate.[401] We left her on the 21st of January in the Temple, overwhelmed with agony. Swoon succeeded swoon as she listened to the clamor in the streets which accompanied her husband to the guillotine. The rumbling of the cannon, on their return, and the shouts of Vive la République beneath her windows announced that the tragedy was terminated. The Commune cruelly refused to allow her any details of the last hours of the king, and even Clery, his faithful servant, was imprisoned, so that he could not even place in her hands the lock of hair and the marriage ring which the king had intrusted to him.
Many conspiracies were formed for the rescue of the royal family, which led to a constant increase of the rigors of their captivity. The queen refused to resume her walks in the garden as she could not endure to pass the door of the king's apartment. But, after long seclusion, for the sake of the health of her children she consented to walk with them each day, for a few moments, on the platform of the tower. The Commune immediately ordered the platform to be surrounded with high boards, so that the captives might not receive any tokens of recognition from their friends.
For four months Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the children had the consolation of condoling with each other in their misery. But on the night of the 4th of July the clatter of an armed band was heard ascending the tower, and some commissioners tumultuously entered her chamber. They read to her a decree announcing that her son, the dauphin, was to be taken from her and imprisoned by himself. The poor child, as he listened to the reading of this cruel edict, was frantic with terror. He threw himself into his mother's arms and shrieked out,
"Oh! mother, mother, do not abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they did papa."
The queen, in a delirium of agony, grasped her child and placing him upon the bed behind her, with eyes glaring like a tigress, bade defiance to the officers, declaring that they should tear her in pieces before they should take her boy. Even the officers were overcome by her heart-rending grief, and for two hours refrained from taking the child by violence. The exhausted mother at length fell in a swoon, and the child was taken, shrieking with terror, from the room. She never saw her son again.
A few weeks of woe passed slowly away, when, early in August, she was awakened from her sleep just after midnight by a band of armed men who came to convey her to the prison of the Conciergerie, where she was to await her trial. The queen had already drained the cup of misery to the dregs, and nothing could add to her woe. She rose, in the stupor of despair, and began to dress herself in the presence of the officers. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw themselves at the feet of the men, and implored them not to take the queen from them. They might as well have plead with the granite blocks of their prison.
Pressing her daughter for a moment convulsively to her heart, she covered her with kisses, spoke a few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then, as if fearing to cast a last look upon these objects of her affection, hurried from the room. In leaving she struck her forehead against the beam of the low door.
"Did you hurt yourself?" inquired one of the men.
"Oh no!" was her reply, "nothing now can farther harm me."