vening of the 24th of July, 1794,
M. Beauharnais found his name with the proscribed who were to be led
to the scaffold with the light of the next day. Love for his wife and
his children rendered life too precious to him to be surrendered
without anguish. But sorrow had subdued his heart, and led him with
prayerfulness to look to God for strength to meet the trial. The native
dignity of his character also nerved him to meet his fate with
fortitude.

He sat down calmly in his cell, and wrote a long, affectionate, and
touching letter to his wife. He assured her of his most heartfelt
appreciation of the purity and nobleness of her character, and of her
priceless worth as a wife and a mother. He thanked her again and again
for the generous spirit with which she forgave his offenses, when, weary
and contrite, he returned from his guilty wanderings, and anew sought
her love. He implored her to cherish in the hearts of his children the
memory of their father, that, though dead, he might still live in their
affections. While he was writing, the executioners came in to cut off
his long hair, that the ax might do its work unimpeded. Picking up a
small lock from the floor, he wished to transmit it to his wife as his
last legacy. The brutal executioners forbade him the privilege. He,
however, succeeded in purchasing from them a few hairs, which he
inclosed in his letter, and which she subsequently received.

In the early dawn of the morning, the cart of the condemned was at the
prison door. The Parisians were beginning to be weary of the abundant
flow of blood, and Robespierre had therefore caused the guillotine to
be removed from the Place de la Revolution to an obscure spot in the
Faubourg St. Antoine. A large number of victims were doomed to die that
morning. The carts, as they rolled along the pavements, groaned with
their burdens, and the persons in the streets looked on in sullen
silence. M. Beauharnais, with firmness, ascended the scaffold. The slide
of the guillotine fell, and the brief drama of his stormy life was
ended.

While the mutilated form of M. Beauharnais was borne to an ignoble
burial, Josephine, entirely unconscious of the calamity which had
befallen her, was cheering her heart with the hope of a speedy union
with her husband and her children in their own loved home. The morning
after the execution, the daily journal, containing the names of those
who had perished on the preceding day, was brought, as usual, t