TO THE 21ST 0F JANUARY.
"We must look misfortune directly in the eye, and have courage to bear it worthily," said Marie Antoinette." "We are prisoners, and shall long remain so! Let us seek to have a kind of household life even in our prison. Let us make a fixed plan how to spend our days."
"You are right, Marie," replied Louis; "let us arrange how to spend each day. As I am no longer a king, I will be the teacher of my son, and try to educate him to be a good king."
"Do you believe, then, husband, that there are to be kings after this in France?" asked Marie Antoinette, with a shrug.
"Well," answered Louis, "we will at least seek to give him such an education that he shall be able to fill worthily whatever station he may be called to. I will be his teacher in the sciences."
"And I will interest him and our daughter in music and drawing," said the queen.
"And you will allow me to teach my niece to embroider an altar- cover," said Madame Elizabeth.
"And in the evening," said Marie Antoinette, nodding playfully to Princess Lamballe, "in the evening we will read comedies, that the children may learn of our Lamballe the art of declamation. We will seek to forget the past, and turn our thoughts only to the present, whatever it may be. You see that these four days that we have spent here in the Temple have been good schoolmasters for me, and have made me patient, and—but what is that?" exclaimed the queen; "did you not hear steps before the door? It must be something unusual, for it is not yet so late as the officials are accustomed to come. Where are the children?"
And, in the anxiety of her motherly love, the queen hastened up the little staircase which led to the second story of the Temple, where was the chamber of the dauphin, together with the general sitting- room.
Louis Charles sprang forward to meet his mother, and asked her whether she had come to fulfil her promise, and go out with him into the garden. The queen, instead of answering, clasped him in her arms, and beckoned to Theresa to come to her side. "Oh! my children, my dear children, I only wanted to see you; I—"