s Clery, "I approached the King's bed and asked permission to offer him my warmest prayers for the end of his misfortunes. 'I accept your good wishes with affection,' he replied, extending his hand to me. As soon as he had risen, he requested a municipal to go and inquire for his family, and present them his good wishes for the new year. The officers were moved by the tone in which these words, so heartrending considering the position of the King, were pronounced . . . . The correspondence between their Majesties went on constantly. The King being informed that Madame Royale was ill, was very uneasy for some days. The Queen, after begging earnestly, obtained permission for M. Brunnier, the medical attendant of the royal children, to come to the Temple. This seemed to quiet him."

The nearer the moment which was to decide the King's fate approached, the greater became the agitation in, Paris. "A report was circulated that the atrocities of September were to be repeated there, and the prisoners and their relatives beset the deputies with supplications that they would snatch them from destruction. The Jacobins, on their part, alleged that conspiracies were hatching in all quarters to save Louis XVI. from punishment, and to restore royalty. Their anger, excited by delays and obstacles, assumed a more threatening aspect; and the two parties thus alarmed one another by supposing that each harboured sinister designs."

On the 14th of January the Convention called for the order of the day, being the final judgment of Louis XVI.

"The sitting of the Convention which concluded the trial," says Hazlitt, "lasted seventy-two hours. It might naturally be supposed that silence, restraint, a sort of religious awe, would have pervaded the scene. On the contrary, everything bore the marks of gaiety, dissipation, and the most grotesque confusion. The farther end of the hall was converted into boxes, where ladies, in a studied deshabille, swallowed ices, oranges, liqueurs, and received the salutations of the members who went and came, as on ordinary occasions. Here the doorkeepers on the Mountain side opened and shut the boxes reserved for the mistresses of the Duc d'Orleans; and there, though every sound of approbation or disapprobation was strictly forbidden, you heard the long and indignant 'Ha, ha's!' of the mother-duchess, the patroness of the bands of female Jacobins, whenever her ears were not loudly greeted with the welcome sounds of death. The upper gallery, re