hear from him.
The barbarous restriction afforded him one more opportunity of showing his
amiable unselfishness and fortitude. The regulation had been made by the
Municipal Council, not by the Assembly; and its inhuman and unprecedented
severity, coupled with a jealousy of the Council, as seeking to usurp the
whole authority of the State, induced the Assembly to rescind it, and to
grant permission, for Louis to have the dauphin and his sister with him.
Yet, lest these innocent children should prove messengers of conspiracy
between him and the queen and Elizabeth, it was ordered at the same time
that, so long as they were allowed to visit him, they should be separated
from their mother and their aunt; and Louis, though never in greater need
of comfort, thought it so much better for the children themselves that
they should be with the queen, that for their sakes he renounced their
society, and allowed the decree of the Council to be carried out in all
its pitiless cruelty.

And, again, we may spare ourselves from dwelling on the details of what,
in hideous mockery, was called the king's trial, though it was in fact a
mere ceremonious prelude to his murder, which had been determined on
before it began. Deep as is the disgrace with which it has forever covered
the nation which tolerated such an abomination, it was relieved by some
incidents which did honor to the country and to human nature. The
murderers of Louis, in their ignoble pedantry, wearied the ear with
appeals to the examples of the ancient Romans, of Decius[5] and of Brutus.
But no Roman ever gave a nobler proof of contempt of danger, and devotion
to duty, than was afforded by the intrepid lawyers, Malesherbes, De Seze,
and Tronchet, who voluntarily undertook the king's defense, though Louis
himself warned them that their utmost efforts would be fruitless, and
would only bring destruction on themselves without saving him. One member,
too, of the Convention, Lanjuinais, though originally he had been a member
of the Breton Club, and had latterly been generally regarded as connected
with the Girondins, made more than one eloquent effort in the king's
behalf, provoking the Jacobins and Girondins to their very wildest fury by
his contemptuous defiance of their menaces. And even when the verdict was
being given; when Jacobins, Girondins, and Cordeliers, Robespierre,
Vergniaud, Danton, and the infamous Duc d'Orleans were vying with one
another in the eagerness with whic