ard of the king,
appeared at Versailles in an hour of great excitement. The mob attacked
him. He was instantly assassinated. His head, covered with the white
locks of age, was cut off, and planted upon one of the palisades of the
palace gates, a fearful warning to all who were suspected of advocating
the cause of the king.

And now no one knew of the buried treasure but Madame du Barri herself.
She, anxious to regain them, ventured, in disguise, to return to France
to disinter her diamonds, and take them with her to England. A young
negro servant, whom she had pampered with every indulgence, and had
caressed with the fondness with which a mother fondles her child, whom
she had caused to be painted by her side in her portraits, saw his
mistress and betrayed her. She was immediately seized by the mob, and
dragged before the revolutionary tribunal of Luciennes. She was
condemned as a Royalist, and was hurried along in the cart of the
condemned, amid the execrations and jeers of the delirious mob, to the
guillotine. Her long hair was shorn, that the action of the knife might
be unimpeded; but the clustering ringlets, in beautiful profusion, fell
over her brow and temples, and veiled her voluptuous features and bare
bosom, from which the executioner had torn the veil. The yells of the
infuriated and deriding populace filled the air, as they danced
exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan. But the shrieks of the
unhappy victim pierced shrilly through them all. She was frantic with
terror. Her whole soul was unnerved, and not one emotion of fortitude
remained to sustain the woman of pleasure through her dreadful doom.
With floods of tears, and gestures of despair, and beseeching,
heart-rending cries, she incessantly exclaimed, "Life--life--life! O
save me! save me!" The mob jeered, and derided, and insulted her in
every conceivable way. They made themselves merry with her anguish and
terror. They shouted witticisms in her ear respecting the pillow of the
guillotine upon which she was to repose her head. Struggling and
shrieking, she was bound to the plank. Suddenly her voice was hushed.
The dissevered head, dripping with blood, fell into the basket, and her
soul was in eternity. Poor woman! It is easy to condemn. It is better
for the heart to pity. Endowed with almost celestial beauty, living in a
corrupt age, and lured, when a child, by a monarch's love, she fell. It
is well to weep over her sad fate, and to remember the