erally to receive some answer of brutal insult. After dinner,
Louis and Marie Antoinette would play piquet or backgammon; as, while they
were thus engaged, the vigilance of their keepers relaxed, and the noise
of shuffling the cards or rattling the dice afforded them opportunities of
saying a few words in whispers to one another, which at other times would
have been overheard. In the evening the queen and the Princess Elizabeth
read aloud, the books chosen being chiefly works of history, or the
masterpieces of Corneille and Racine, as being most suitable to form the
minds and tastes of the children; and sometimes Louis himself would seek
to divert them from their sorrows by asking the children riddles, and
finding some amusement in their attempts to solve them. At bed-time the
queen herself made the dauphin say his prayers, teaching him especially
the duty of praying for others, for the Princess de Lamballe, and for
Madame de Tourzel, his governess; though even those petitions the poor boy
was compelled to utter in whispers, lest, if they were repeated to the
Municipal Council, he should bring ruin on those whom he regarded as
friends. At ten the family separated for the night, a sentinel making his
bed across the door of each of their chambers, to prevent the possibility
of any escape.

In this way they passed a fortnight, when the monotony of their lives was
fearfully disturbed. The Jacobins had established their ascendency. They
had created a Revolutionary Tribunal, which at once began its course of
wholesale condemnation, sending almost every one who was brought before it
to the scaffold with merely a form of trial; the guillotine being erected,
as it was said, _en permanence_, that the deaths of the victims might
never be delayed for want of means to execute them; while, that a
succession of victims might never be wanting, Danton, in his new character
of Minister of Justice, instituted a search of every house for arms or
papers, or any thing which might afford evidence or even suggest a
suspicion that the owners disliked or feared the new authorities.

But it was not enough to strike terror into all the peaceful citizens. The
Girondins had always been objects of jealous rivalry to the Jacobins.
Fanatical and relentless as they were in their cruelty, they had recently
given proofs that they disapproved of the furious blood-thirstiness that
was beginning to decimate the city, and they had carried the Assembly with
th