othingness by
showing myself. A queen who is not regent must in such circumstances
remain inactive and prepare to die."

The danger constantly increased. At four in the morning of one of the
last days of July, warning was given at the palace that the faubourgs
were threatening, and would doubtless march against the Tuileries.
Madame Campan went very softly into the Queen's room. For a wonder,
Marie Antoinette was sleeping peacefully and profoundly. Madame Campan
did not rouse her. "You were right," said Louis XVI.; "it is good to
see her take a little rest. Oh! her griefs redouble mine!" At her
waking the Queen, on being informed of what had passed, began to weep,
and said: "Why was I not called?" Madame Campan excused herself by
saying: "It was only a false alarm. Your Majesty needed to repair your
prostrate strength."--"It is not prostrate," quickly replied the
courageous sovereign; "misfortune makes it all the greater. Elisabeth
was with the King, and I was sleeping! I, who wish to perish beside
him! I am his wife; I am not willing that he should incur the least
danger without me!"

On Sunday, August 5,--the last Sunday the royal family were to spend at
the Tuileries,--as they were going to the chapel to hear Mass, half the
National Guards on duty cried: "Long live the King!" The others said:
"No, no; no King, down with the veto!" The same day, at Vespers, the
chanters had agreed to swell their tones greatly, and in a {265}
menacing way, when reciting this versicle of the _Magnificat: Deposuit
potentes de sede_--"He hath put down the mighty from their seat." In
their turn the royalists, after the _Dominum salvum fac regem_, cried
thrice, turning as they did so toward the Queen: _Et reginam_. There
was a continual murmuring all through the divine office. Five days
later, the same chapel was to be a pool of blood.

And yet Madame Elisabeth, always calm and always angelic, still had
illusions. One morning of this terrible month of August, while in her
room in the Pavilion of Flora, she thought she heard some one humming
her favorite air, _Pauvre Jacques_, beneath her windows. Attracted by
this refrain, which in the midst of sorrow renewed the souvenir of
happier times, she half opened her window and listened attentively.
The words sung were not those of the ballad she loved, yet they were
royalist in sentiment and adapted to the same air. The poor people had
been substituted for poor Jack--the poo