mercy. I beg
pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the
vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all
my enemies the evils that they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts
and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. The idea of being
forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the
greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to
my latest moment I thought of them.

"Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think
always of me; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor dear
children. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever! Farewell!
farewell! I must now occupy myself with my spiritual duties, as I am not
free in my actions. Perhaps they will bring me a priest; but I here
protest that I will not say a word to him, but that I will treat him as a
person absolutely unknown."

Her forebodings were realized; her letter never reached Elizabeth, but was
carried to Fouquier, who placed it among his special records. Yet, if in
those who had thus wrought the writer's destruction there had been one
human feeling, it might have been awakened by the simple dignity and
unaffected pathos of this sad farewell. No line that she ever wrote was
more thoroughly characteristic of her. The innocence, purity, and
benevolence of her soul shine through every sentence. Even in that awful
moment she never lost her calm, resigned fortitude, nor her consideration
for others. She speaks of and feels for her children, for her friends, but
never for herself. And it is equally characteristic of her that, even in
her own hopeless situation, she still can cherish hope for others, and can
look forward to the prospect of those whom she loves being hereafter
united in freedom and happiness. She thought, it may be, that her own
death would be the last sacrifice that her enemies would require. And for
even her enemies and murderers she had a word of pardon, and could address
a message of mercy for them to her son, who, she trusted, might yet some
day have power to show that mercy she enjoined, or to execute the
vengeance which with her last breath she deprecated.

She threw herself on her bed and fell asleep. At seven she was roused by
the executioner. The streets were already thronged with a fierce and
sanguinary mob, whose shouts of triumph were so vociferous that she asked
one of her jailers whether t