r ceased to think
of the martyrs for whom she wept. At the Tuileries, she occupied the
Pavillon de l'Horloge and the Pavillon de Flore, the first floor
apartments that had been her mother's. She used for her own a little
salon hung with white velvet sown with marguerite lilies. This tapestry
was the work of the unhappy Queen and of Madame Elisabeth. In the same
room was a stool on which Louis XVII. had languished and suffered. It
served as prie-dieu to the Orphan of the Temple. There was in this
stool a drawer where she had put away the remaining relics of her
parents: the black silk vest and white cravat worn by Louis XVI. the
day of his death; a lace bonnet of Marie Antoinette, the last work done
by the Queen in her prison of the Conciergerie, which Robespierre had
had taken from her on the pretext that the widow of the Christian King
might kill herself with her needle or with a lace-string; finally some
fragments of the fichu which the wind raised from the shoulders of
Madame Elisabeth when the angelic Princess was already on the scaffold.
The Dauphiness, who usually dined with the King, dined alone on the
21st of January and the 16th of October. She shut herself in the
chamber where she had collected these relics and passed the whole day
and evening there in prayer.
The charity of the pious Princess was inexhaustible. Almost all her
revenue was expended in alms. She would not have receipts signed by
those to whom she distributed relief. "The duty of givers," she said,
"is to forget their gifts and the names of those who receive them; it
is for those who receive to remember." Nor did she ever ask the
political opinions of those she relieved. To be unfortunate, sufficed
to excite her interest. One day Sister Rosalie, charged by the Princess
with paying a pension to a man whose ill conduct she had discovered,
thought it her duty to notify the benefactress, and suspend the succor.
"My sister," replied the Dauphiness, "continue to pay this man his
pension. We must be charitable to the good that they may persevere, and
to the bad that they may become better." Sunday, when the Princess did
no work, she passed the evening in detaching the wax seals from letters
and envelopes. This wax, converted into sticks, produced one thousand
francs a year, which she sent to a poor family. She gave much, but only
to Frenchmen and Frenchwomen. She replied to every demand for aid for
foreigners that she was sorry not to comply with the r
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