erself, the imperial woman. Her look, they
say, as that hideous Indictment was reading, continued calm; 'she was
sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one plays on the Piano.'
You discern, not without interest, across that dim Revolutionary
Bulletin itself, how she bears herself queenlike. Her answers are
prompt, clear, often of Laconic brevity; resolution, which has grown
contemptuous without ceasing to be dignified, veils itself in calm
words. "You persist then in denial?"--"My plan is not denial: it is the
truth I have said, and I persist in that." Scandalous Hebert has
borne his testimony as to many things: as to one thing, concerning
Marie-Antoinette and her little Son,--wherewith Human Speech had better
not further be soiled. She has answered Hebert; a Juryman begs to
observe that she has not answered as to this. "I have not answered," she
exclaims with noble emotion, "because Nature refuses to answer such a
charge brought against a Mother. I appeal to all the Mothers that are
here." Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke out into something almost
like swearing at the brutish blockheadism of this Hebert; (Vilate,
Causes secretes de la Revolution de Thermidor (Paris, 1825), p. 179.) on
whose foul head his foul lie has recoiled. At four o'clock on Wednesday
morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating, jury-charging,
and other darkening of counsel, the result comes out: Sentence of Death.
"Have you anything to say?" The Accused shook her head, without speech.
Night's candles are burning out; and with her too Time is finishing,
and it will be Eternity and Day. This Hall of Tinville's is dark,
ill-lighted except where she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to
die.

Two Processions, or Royal Progresses, three-and-twenty years apart, have
often struck us with a strange feeling of contrast. The first is of a
beautiful Archduchess and Dauphiness, quitting her Mother's City, at the
age of Fifteen; towards hopes such as no other Daughter of Eve then had:
'On the morrow,' says Weber an eye witness, 'the Dauphiness left Vienna.
The whole City crowded out; at first with a sorrow which was silent. She
appeared: you saw her sunk back into her carriage; her face bathed in
tears; hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands;
several times putting out her head to see yet again this Palace of her
Fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned her regret,
her gratitude to the good