usations as unjust as serious
assailed her, and in the horrors of the succeeding revolution the
popular feeling evinced itself in a hundred frightful ways. Louis
XVI., a mild prince, averse to violence or bloodshed, was unfit to
stem the tide of opposition; had he possessed the energy of his
queen, the Reign of Terror had perhaps never existed. Throughout her
misfortunes, in every scene of flight, of opprobrium, and
desolation, her magnanimity and courage won, even from the ruffians
around, occasional expressions of sympathy. A harrowing and
melancholy history is hers, and one which has been often vividly
narrated; its details, also, are sufficiently recent to be still
fresh within the recollection of many. For these reasons, and
further because it seems to us a repellent, if not a mischievous,
act to amplify such records before advancing age shall have invested
them to the mind with deeper significance, we gladly pass over the
picture suggested by this dark historical page, and, resuming the
narrative where Madame de Campan drops it, content ourselves with a
description of the last scene in the terrible drama.

When this devoted woman left her royal mistress in the miserable
cell at the Convent of the Feuillans, she never again saw her.
Imprisonment, and the intense grief she experienced, more for others
than for herself, completely transformed the once beautiful queen;
her hair was prematurely silvered, like that of Mary Stuart, her
figure bowed, her voice low and tremulous. Then came the separation
from the king. Once more only did her eyes again behold him, and
after the parting between the dethroned monarch and his adoring
family, he might indeed have been able to say, "The bitterness of
death was passed." However weak at intervals, the unhappy Louis met
his death heroically. The sufferings of his wife at the time when
the guns boomed out the fearful catastrophe, may be supposed to have
been as great as the human frame has power to endure. Shortly after,
she was separated from her children and conveyed to the prison of
the Conciergerie, a damp and loathsome place, whence she was
summoned one morning in October to receive a sentence for which it
is probable she ardently longed. Let us look at her through the bars
of her prison upon her return thither after it was pronounced.

It is four o'clock in the morning. The widowed Queen of France
stands calm and resigned in her cell, listening with a melancholy
smile to t