Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/67

MARIE ANTOINETTE 245 after that interval, born to her, two of whom died in their infancy, and two sur- vived to share their parent's subsequent imprisonment. The sad history of her son's fate, a promising and attractive boy, is well known. We have seen the Austrian princess was no favorite with her husband's na- tion. After. a time accusations as unjust as serious assailed her, and in the hor- rors of the succeeding revolution the popular feeling evinced itself in a hundred frightful ways. Louis XVI., a mild prince, averse to, violence or bloodshed, was unfit to stem the tide of opposition ; had he possessed the energy of his queen, the Reign of Terror had perhaps never existed. Throughout her mis- fortunes, in every scene of flight, of opprobrium, and desolation, her magnanim- ity and courage won, even from the ruffians around, occasional .expressions of sympathy. A harrowing and melancholy history is hers, and one which has been often vividly narrated ; its details, also, are sufficiently recent to be still fresh within the recollection of many. For these reasons, and further because it seems to us a repellent, if not a mischievous, act to amplify such records before ad- vancing age shall have invested them to the mind with deeper significance, we gladly pass over the picture suggested by this dark historical page, and, resuming the narrative where Madame de Campan drops it, content ourselves with a de- scription of the last scene in the terrible drama. When this devoted woman left her royal mistress in the miserable cell at the Convent of the Feuillans, she never again saw her. Imprisonment, and the in- tense grief she experienced, more for others than for herself, completely trans- formed the once beautiful queen ; her hair was prematurely silvered, like that of Mary Stuart, her figure bowed, her voice low and tremulous. Then came the separation from the king. Once more only did her eyes again behold him, and after the parting between the dethroned monarch and his adoring family, he might indeed have been able to say, "The bitterness of death was passed." However weak at intervals, the unhappy Louis met his death heroically. The sufferings of his wife at the time when the guns boomed out the fearful catas^ trophe, may be supposed to have been as great as the human frame has power to endure. Shortly after, she was separated from her children and conveyed to the prison of the Conciergerie, a damp and loathsome place, whence she was sum- moned one morning in October to receive a sentence for which it is probable she ardently longed. Let us look at her through the bars of her prison upon her return thither after it was pronounced. It is four o'clock in the morning. The widowed Queen of France stands calm and resigned in her cell, listening with a melancholy smile to the tumult of the mob outside. A faint illumination announces the approach of day ; it is the last she has to live ! Seating herself at a table she writes, with hurried hand, a last letter of ardent tenderness to the sister of her husband, the pious Madame Eliza- beth, and to her children ; and now she passionately presses the insensible paper to her lips, as the sole remaining link between those dear ones and herself. She stops, sighs, and throws herself upon her miserable pallet. What ! in such an hour as this can the queen sleep ? Even so !