ple, found pinned to the waist of her dress after her execution, and
her splendid courage to the end, rounds out the picturesque story of
her useless martyrdom. A Girondist waiting in the Conciergerie, when
he heard of her crime and end, exclaimed: "It will kill us! But she
has taught us how to die!"

The end did not come so swiftly for the queen, who, after being removed
from the Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in the dark cell in
that abode of horrors, the Conciergerie. Then came the trial, the
inquisitorial trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom of that
dimly lighted hall. And at half-past four in the morning she heard
without a tremor the terrible words, "Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis
Capet, the Tribunal condemns you to die." Not for a moment did this
intrepid woman quail; and a small detail brings before us vividly her
wonderful calmness. As she reached the stairs in her pitiful return to
her cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the gendarmes, who was
at her side, "Monsieur, I can scarcely see (_Je vois a peine_); will
you lead me?"

In another half hour the drums were beating in every quarter in
preparation for the event; and at ten o'clock she started upon her last
ride. And how bravely she met her awful fate! We forget her follies,
her reckless extravagances, in admiration for her courage as she rides
to her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting in that hideous
tumbril, head erect, pale, proud, defiant, as if upon a throne (October
16, 1793).

The search-light of scrutiny has been turned upon this unfortunate
woman for more than a century, and all that has been discovered is that
she was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and absolutely ignorant of the
gravity of her responsibility in the position she occupied.

In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman of
her period would have done under the same circumstances--not better,
and not worse. But when the time came to try her soul and test her
mettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassing
belief.

If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamond
necklace--a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis--it
would certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not. It will
be remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from the
reign of Louis XV., who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was to
cost a sum large enough for