his family. The Queen, who was near
enough to hear distinctly the voice which told this news, not exact as
yet, was struck with a terror from which she did not recover.

And yet there were still souls that gave way to compassion. From the
upper stories of houses near the Temple enclosure there were eyes
looking down into the garden when the prisoners took their walk. The
common people and the workmen living in these poor abodes were
affected. Sometimes, to show her gratitude for the sympathy of those
unknown friends, Marie Antoinette would remove her veil, and smile.
When the little Dauphin was playing, there would be hands at the
windows, joined as if to applaud. Flowers would sometimes fall, as if
by chance, from a garret roof to the Queen's feet, and occasionally it
happened that when the captives had gone back to their prison, they
would hear in the darkness the echo of some royalist refrain, hummed by
a passer-by in the silence of the night.

The Temple tower is no longer in existence. Bonaparte visited it when
he was Consul. "There are {349} too many souvenirs in that prison," he
exclaimed. "I will tear it down." In 1811 he kept his promise. The
palace of the grand-prior was destroyed in 1853. No trace remains of
that famous enclosure of the Templars whose legend has so sombre a
poetry. But it has left an impress on the imagination of peoples which
will never be effaced. It seems to rise again gigantic, that tower
where the son of Saint Louis realized not alone the type of the antique
sage of whom Horace said: _Impavidum ferient ruinae_, but also the
purest ideal of the true Christian. Does not the name Temple seem
predestinated for a spot which was to be sanctified by so many virtues,
and where the martyr King put in practice these verses of the
_Imitation of Jesus Christ_, his favorite book: "It needs no great
virtue to live peaceably with those who are upright and amiable; one is
naturally pleased in such society; we always love those whose
sentiments agree with ours. But it is very praiseworthy, and the
effect of a special grace and great courage to live in peace with
severe and wicked men, who are disorderly, or who contradict us.... He
who knows best how to suffer, will enjoy the greatest peace; such a one
is the conqueror of himself, master of the world, the friend of Jesus
Christ, and the inheritor of heaven."

{350}

XXXIV.

THE PRINCESS DE LAMBALLE'S MURDER.

The Princess d