t-lived, for the murmurs of
the Revolution could already be heard. On the 20th of July, 1791, King
Louis XVI., his family and court, fled from the disloyal French
capital in the night, their intention being to travel in disguise to
Montmedy, and there to join the Marquis de Bouille, who was at the
head of a large army. When they awoke the little dauphin, and began
to dress him as a girl, his sister asked him what he thought of the
proceeding. His answer was, "I think we are going to play a comedy;"
but never had comedy more tragic ending. The royal party were
discovered at Varennes, and brought back to the Tuileries amid the
hootings and jeers of the mob. "The journey," says Lamartine, "was a
Calvary of sixty leagues, every step of which was a torture." On the
way the little girl whispered to her brother, "Charles, this is not a
comedy." "I have found that out long since," said the boy. But he was
brave, tender to his mother, and gravely courteous to the commissioner
of the Assembly who had been deputed to bring them back. "Sir," he
said, from his mother's knee, "you ask if I am not very sorry to
return to Paris. I am glad to be anywhere, so that it is with mamma
and papa, and my aunt and sister, and Madame de Tourzel, my
governess."

There soon came the wild scene in the Tuileries, and the sad
appearance of the dethroned king in the Assembly, with its still more
lamentable ending. Louis XVI. was carried to the prison of the Temple.
This building had originally been a fortress of the Knights Templars.
In 1792, the year in which it received the captive monarch, it
consisted of a large square tower, flanked at its angles by four round
towers, and having on the north side another separate tower of less
dimensions than the first, surmounted by turrets, and generally called
the little tower. It was in this little tower that the royal family of
France were located by the commune of Paris. Here the king spent his
time in the education of his son, while the best historian of the boy
says he devoted himself to comforting his parents: "Here he was happy
to live, and he was only turned to grief by the tears which sometimes
stole down his mother's cheeks. He never spoke of his games and walks
of former days; he never uttered the name of Versailles or the
Tuileries; he seemed to regret nothing."

On the morning of the 21st January, 1793, Louis XVI. was carried to
the scaffold, and suffered death. On the previous day, at a final
i