jailer, touched with compassion, and regardless of the fate of the
predecessors of her parents, entered her cell every morning to dress
her whitened locks, which sorrow had bleached. The queen ventured one
day to solicit an additional counterpane for her bed. "How dare you
make such a request?" replied the solicitor general of the commune;
"you deserve to be sent to the guillotine!" The queen succeeded
secretly, by means of a tooth-pick, which she converted into a
tapestry needle, in plaiting a garter from thread which she plucked
from an old woollen coverlet. This memorial of a mother's love she
contrived, by stratagem, to transmit to her daughter. This was the
richest legacy the daughter of Maria Theresa and the Queen of France
could bequeath to her child. That garter is still preserved as a
sacred relic by those who revere the memory and commiserate the
misfortunes of Maria Antoinette.

Two months of this all but insupportable imprisonment passed away, when,
early in October, she was brought from her dungeon below to the
court-room above for her trial. Her accusation was that she abhorred
the revolution which had beheaded her husband, and plunged her and her
whole family into woes, the remembrance of which it would seem that even
eternity could hardly efface. The queen condescended to no defense. She
appeared before her accusers in the calm dignity of despair, and yet
with a spirit as unbroken and queenly as when she moved in the gilded
saloons of Versailles. The queen was called to hear her sentence. It was
death within twenty-four hours. Not the tremor of a muscle showed the
slightest agitation as the mob, with clappings and shoutings, manifested
their hatred for their victim, and their exultation at her doom. Insults
and execrations followed her to the stair-case as she descended again to
her dungeon. It was four o'clock in the morning. A few rays of the
dawning day struggled through the bars of her prison window, and she
seemed to smile with a faint expression of pleasure at the thought that
her last day of earthly woe had dawned. She called for pen and ink,
and wrote a very affecting letter to her sister and children. Having
finished the letter, she repeatedly and passionately kissed it, as if
it were the last link which bound her to the loved ones from whom she
was so soon to be separated by death. She then, as if done with earth,
kneeled down and prayed, and with a tranquillized spirit, threw herself
upon her