The Romance of Madame Tussaud's

by John Theodore Tussaud

Another witness testifies that among the effects of the ex-Queen found at the prison of the Temple was a satin riband bearing the gilt image of a Heart with the inscription “Cor Jesu miserere nobis.” Other testimony is to the effect that while the Queen and the children were incarcerated in the Temple, after the execution of Louis, the poor little Dauphin was placed at the top of the table by his mother, and was served first; thus justifying the inference that she ignored the Republic, One and Indivisible, and recognised her young son as Louis XVII, and the successor of his murdered sire.

Another charge, an abominable charge, and one so monstrous as to make it scarcely credible that it should be launched against a woman and a mother, is that she had systematically sought to corrupt the mind of the poor young prince. To this horrible allegation she makes at first no answer. At length, when the charge is repeated, she is moved to noble indignation, and exclaims: You accuse me of an impossibility: “J’en appelle à toutes les mères.” I appeal to all mothers. But the instinct of maternity seems to be dead in all that hall of blood, and the beldames in the public tribunes only yell and gibe at her.

Less revolting, but equally preposterous, is the evidence of one Renée Mullet, a chambermaid who has been in service at Versailles, and this hussey swears that one day, “in a moment of good humour,” she asked the ci-devant Duc de Coigny whether the Emperor still continued to wage war against the Turks; as in that case France would soon be ruined, the Queen having sent her brother no less than two hundred millions of livres, wherewith to carry on hostilities. To this, according to the gossiping waiting woman, the Duke made answer: “Thou art right enough. Two hundred millions have already been spent, and we are not at the end of it yet.”

It is on such evidence as this—evidence not heavy enough to detach a feather from a pigeon’s wing, not convincing enough to prove a forty shilling debt, the wretched Marie Antoinette is at length convicted. The President sums up, furiously, against her. The advocates who defend her, Chauveau and Tronçon-Ducoudray have little to say, to the point, and can only feebly plead for clemency to be extended to her; and the jury, after deliberating for fifty-five minutes, return a verdict affirming all the charges submitted to them. Hermann calls on the accused to declare whether she has any objection to make to the sentence of the law demanded by the Public Accuser. Marie Antoinette bows her head in token of a negative.

Then the tribunal, putting their bloodthirsty heads together for a few minutes, condemn Marie Antoinette of Austria and Lorraine, widow of Louis Capet to the punishment of Death, “and the confiscation of all her property for the benefit of the Republic, the sentence to be executed in the Square of the Revolution.” The confiscation of all her property! When she was dead, an inventory was taken of the few rags which she had left behind her in her cell in the Conciergerie, and they were appraised at the magnificent sum of nine livres, about seven and sixpence sterling. Nine livres all told! In the second year of her marriage it was computed that the roll and butter served every morning to each of her ladies of honour, cost two thousand livres, or eighty pounds a year; and five thousand livres was the annual charge for the bouillon, or beef-tea, kept hot by day and by night for Madame Royale, who was a weakly child. During the earlier portion of her imprisonment the unhappy Queen had been supplied with body linen by the compassionate care of the Marchioness of Stafford, the wife of the British Ambassador in Paris, but there was no kindly Ambassadress to succour her in her last and darkest days, and the only hand held forth in pity to this forlorn daughter of the Cæsars was that of a gaoler’s daughter.

It was half past four on the morning of the sixteenth of October when this infernal tribunal adjourned, and the Queen was conducted back to her prison. Throughout the whole of her trial she had not ceased to maintain a calm countenance; but at times she seemed to be giving way to a feeling of sheer weary listlessness, and moved her fingers on the bar of the dock before her, as though she was playing on the harpsichord When she heard the sentence pronounced, her features did not shew the slightest alteration; and she walked from the hall erect and seemingly unmoved, gendarmes with drawn swords before and behind her, and the beldames of the fish-market and the rag-shops cursing and shrieking at her, just as you may see them in Paul Delaroche’s noble picture.

So they took her back to a dungeon twelve feet long, eight feet broad, four feet underground, with a grated window on a level with the pavement. Into this wretched hole some scraps of the coarsest food were brought her; but she was left under the incessant supervision of a female prisoner and two soldiers. It is said that she snatched a little sleep. On waking she asked one of the gendarmes who had been present at the trial whether she had replied “with too much dignity” to the question put to her. “I ask,” she added, “because I overheard a woman say, See how haughty she still is.” The woman who could have made such an observation must have been one of the hags that Delaroche has painted.

At seven o’clock in the morning, the entire garrison of Paris was under arms. Cannon were placed in all the public places; and at the foot of every bridge from the Quay of the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, that magnificent area between the gardens of the Tuileries, originally called the Place Louis XV, and now know as the Place de la Concorde. At half-past eleven Marie Antoinette, dressed in a white linen déshabille, was brought out from the prison. As though she had been the commonest of malefactors she was made to mount the charette, or open cart, the appointed tumbril of infamy. At least the murderers of her husband had had the decency to allow him the “luxury” of a hackney coach, when he was taken from the Temple to the scaffold. Her hair had been cut short ere she left the gaol, and what remained of her formerly luxuriant tresses was tucked under a white mob-cap. Her hands were tied behind her back.

Of the Queen in this deplorable plight there exists a very beautiful statue executed by Lord Ronald Gower. On the right, in the tumbril, was seated Sanson, the executioner, and on the left a “constitutional” priest, that is to say, one who had taken the oath of fealty to the Republic. To the ministrations of this “patriotic” cleric, who was dressed in light grey coat and a bob-wig, Marie Antoinette had in the first instance declined to listen; but she occasionally spoke to him on her way to the fatal Place de la Révolution.

An immense mob, in which women were revoltingly numerous, crowded the streets throughout the entire line of route insulting the Queen and vociferating “Long live the Republic!” She seldom cast her eyes on the populace, but from time to time looked with some curiosity on the prodigious military force surrounding the cart. Otherwise her attitude throughout this last dismal pilgrimage was one of half torpid indifference.