"I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains. Take it; but do not make me suffer long."
TRIAL OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.
At four o'clock on the morning of the 16th she listened to her sentence condemning her to die. In the dignity of silence, and without the tremor of a muscle, she accepted her doom. As she was led from the court-room to her dungeon, to prepare for her execution, the brutal populace, with stampings and clappings, applauded the sentence. Being indulged with pen and paper in these last hours, she wrote as follows to her sister:
"October 16th, half past four in the morning.
"I write you, my sister, for the last time. I have been condemned, not to an ignominious death—that only awaits criminals—but to go and rejoin your brother. Innocent as he, I hope to show the same firmness as he did in these last moments. I grieve bitterly at leaving my poor children; you know that I existed but for them and you—you who have, by your friendship, sacrificed all to be with us. In what a position do I leave you. I have learned, by the pleadings on my trial, that my daughter was separated from you. Alas! my poor child. I dare not write to her. She could not receive my letter. I know not even if this may reach you. Receive my blessing for both.
"I hope one day, when they are older, they may rejoin you and rejoice in liberty at your tender care. May their friendship and mutual confidence form their happiness. May my daughter feel that, at her age, she ought always to aid her brother with that advice with which the greater experience she possesses and her friendship should inspire her. May my son, on his part, render to his sister every care and service which affection can dictate. Let my son never forget the last words of his father. I repeat them to him expressly. Let him never attempt to avenge our death."
Having finished the letter, which was long, she folded it and kissed it repeatedly, "as if she could thus transmit the warmth of her lips and the moisture of her tears to her children." She then threw herself upon the pallet and slept quietly for two or three hours. A few rays of morning light were now struggling in through the grated bars of the window. The daughter of Madame Bault came in to dress her for the guillotine. She put on her white robe. A white handkerchief covered her shoulders, and a white cap, bound around her temples by a black ribbon, covered her hair.
It was a cold autumnal morning, and a chill fog filled the streets of Paris. At eleven o'clock the executioners led her from her cell. She cordially embraced the kind-hearted daughter of the concierge, and, having with her own hands cut off her hair, allowed herself to be bound, without a murmur, and issued from the steps of the Conciergerie. Instead of a carriage, the coarse car of the condemned awaited her at the gateway of the prison. For a moment she recoiled from this unanticipated humiliation, but immediately recovering herself she ascended the cart. There was no seat in the car, and, as her hands were bound behind her, she was unable to support herself from the jolting over the pavement. As she was jostled rudely to and fro, in the vain attempt to preserve her equilibrium, the multitudes thronging the streets shouted in derision. They had been taught to hate her, to regard her not only as the implacable foe of popular liberty, which she was, but as the most infamous of women, which she was not. "These," they cried, "are not your cushions of Trianon."
It was a long ride to the scaffold, during which the queen suffered all that insult, derision, and contumely can inflict. The procession crossed the Seine by the Pont au Change, and traversed the Rue St. Honoré. Upon reaching the Place of the Revolution the cart stopped for a moment near the entrance of the garden of the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette for a few moments contemplated in silence those scenes of former happiness and grandeur. A few more revolutions of the wheels placed her at the foot of the guillotine. She mounted to the scaffold, and inadvertently trod upon the foot of the executioner.
"Pardon me," said the queen, with as much courtesy as if she had been in one of the saloons of Versailles. Kneeling, she uttered a brief prayer, and then, turning her eyes to the distant towers of the Temple, she said,