ng the Tuileries, but, dismal and lugubrious
as his forebodings may have been, how much more sombre was the reality
to prove!

What a terrible fate was reserved for the chief actors in this drama!
Yet a few days, and the chivalrous Gustavus was to be assassinated.
The hour of execution was approaching for Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette. Fersen, likewise, was to have a most tragic end. From the
moment when he bade his last adieu to the unhappy Queen, his life was
but one long torment. His disposition, already inclined to melancholy,
became incurably sad. His loyal and devoted soul could not accustom
itself to the thought of the calamities weighing so cruelly upon that
good and beautiful sovereign of whom he said in 1778: "The Queen is the
prettiest and most amiable princess that I know." On October 14, 1793,
he will still be endeavoring, with the aid of Baron de Breteuil, to
bring to completion a thousandth plot to extricate the august captive
from her fate. He will learn the fatal tidings on the 20th. "I can
think of nothing but my loss," he will write in his journal. "It is
frightful to have no positive details. It is horrible that she should
have been alone in her last moments, with no one to speak to, or to
receive her last wishes. No; without vengeance, my heart will never be
content." Covered with honors under the reign of Gustavus IV.,
senator, chancellor of the Academy of {22} Upsal, member of the
Seraphim Order, grand marshal of the kingdom of Sweden, there will
remain in the depths of his heart a wound which nothing can heal. An
inveterate fatality will pursue him as it had done the unfortunate
sovereign of whom he had been the chevalier. He will perish in a riot
at Stockholm, June 20, 1810, at the time of the obsequies of the Prince
Royal. Struck down by fists and walking-sticks, his hair pulled out,
his clothes torn to rags, he will be dragged about half-naked, rolled
underfoot, assassinated by a maddened populace. Before rendering his
last sigh, he will succeed in rising to his knees, and, joining his
hands, he will utter these words from the stoning of Saint Stephen: "O
my God, who callest me to Thee, I implore Thee for my tormentors, whom
I pardon." If not the same words, they are at least the same thoughts
as those of Marie Antoinette on the platform of the scaffold.

{23}

III.

THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD.

One after another, Marie Antoinette lost her last chances of sa