And yet Marie Antoinette could speak to no one of her hopes and fears. She must breathe her prayer in her own heart alone, for the municipal officials were there, and the two servants who had been forced upon the prisoners, Tison and his wife, the paid servants of their enemies.
Only the brave look and the clearer brow told the king of the hopes and wishes of his wife, but he responded to them with a faint shrug and a sad smile.
All at once, after the royal family had sat down to take their dinner at the round table—all at once there was a stir in the building which was before so still. Terrible cries were heard, and steps advancing up the staircase. The two officials, who were sitting in the open anteroom, stood and listened at the door. This was suddenly opened, and a third official entered, pale, trembling with rage, and raising his clinched fists tremblingly against the king.
"The enemy is in Verdun," cried he. "We shall all be undone, but you shall be the first to suffer!"
The king looked quietly at him; but the dauphin, terrified at the looks of the angry man and his loud voice, burst into a violent fit of weeping and sobbing, and Marie Antoinette and the little Theresa strove in vain to quiet the little fellow by gentle words.
A fourth official now entered, and whispered secretly to his colleagues.
"Is my family no longer in safety here?" asked the king.
The official shrugged his shoulders. "The report has gone abroad that the royal family is no longer in the Temple. This has excited the people, and they desire that you all show yourselves at the windows, but we will not permit it; you shall not show yourselves. The public must have more confidence in its servants."
"Yes," cried the other official, still raising his fists—"yes, that it must; but if the enemy come, the royal family shall die!"
And when at these words the dauphin began to cry aloud again, he continued: "I pity the poor little fellow, but die he must!"