They tear away from the queen the weeping child, who clings to her, and who is carried to the president, at whose left hand the king has seated himself.
Again a voice is heard reminding the Assembly of the law which forbids them to deliberate in the presence of the king.
The royal family must leave the lower portion of the hall, and are led into a small room, with iron trellis-work, behind the president’s chair.
The royal family, with their attendants, pressed into the small space of this room, can here at least, away from the gaze of their enemies, hide their dishonored heads; at least no one sees the nervousness of despair which now and then agitates the tall figure of the queen, the tears trembling on her eyelids when she looks to the poor little dauphin, whose blond curly head lies in her bosom, asleep from exhaustion, hunger, and sorrow.
No one sees the king and the queen, but they see and hear every thing. They hear from without the howlings of the mob, the cannon’s roar, the reports of the rifles, telling them that a bloody fratricidal strife, a terrible civil war, is raging. They hear there in the hall, a few steps from them, the fanatical harangues of the deputies, whose words, full of blood, are like the hands of the murdering Marsellais there without. Marie Antoinette hears Vergniaud’s motion, “to divest the king at once of his power and rank,” and she hears the acclamations of the Assembly in favor of the motion. She hears the Assembly by their own power reinvesting the Girondist ministers, dismissed by the king, with their dignity and power! She hears the Assembly decide “to invite the French people to form a national compact.”
She hears all this, and the cold perspiration of anguish and horror covers her brow while she has yet strength enough to force hack her tears into her heart. She asks for a handkerchief to wipe her forehead. Not one of the attendants around can furnish a kerchief which is not stained with the blood of the victims fallen at their side in protecting the royal family with their lives. [Footnote: “Memoires inedites du Comte de la Rochefoucauld.”]
At last, at two o’clock in the morning, is this painful martyrdom ended, and the royal family are led into the upper rooms of the convent, where hastily and penuriously enough a few chambers had been furnished.
The howlings of the crowd ascend to their windows. Under those of the queen’s room groups of infuriated women sing the song whose horrible burden is, “Madame Veto avait promis de faire egorger tout Paris.” Between the sentences other voices shout and howl: “The queen is the cause of our misery! Kill her! kill the queen, the murderess of France! Kill Madame Veto! Throw us her head!”
Three days after, the royal family are led to the Temple. The rulers of the state are now state prisoners. But the queen had already found the peace which misfortune generally brings to strong souls; and as she walked to the Temple, and saw her foot protruding from the extremity of her shoe, she said with an affecting smile, “Who could have believed that one day the Queen of France should be in want of shoes!”
With the 10th of August began the last act of the great tragedy of the revolution. Its second scene had its representation in the first days of September, in those days of blood and tears, in which infuriated bands of the people stormed the prisons to murder the captive priests, aristocrats, and royalists.