morning had hardly dawned when she was again conducted to the
Tribunal, in company with twenty-four others, of every age and of both
sexes, whose crime was that they were nobles. Ladies were there,
illustrious in virtue and rank, who had formerly graced the brilliant
assemblies of the Tuileries and of Versailles. Young men, whose family
names had been renowned for ages, stood there to answer for the crime
of possessing a distinguished name. While looking upon this group of
nobles, gathered before that merciless tribunal, where judgment was
almost certain condemnation, the public accuser, with cruel irony
remarked, "Of what can Madame Elizabeth complain, when she sees herself
at the foot of the guillotine, surrounded by her faithful nobility? She
can now fancy herself back again in the gay festivities of Versailles."

The charges against Elizabeth were, that she was the sister of a tyrant,
and that she loved that royal family whom the nation had adjudged not
fit to live. "If my brother had been the tyrant you declare him to have
been," the princess remarked, "you would not be where you now are, nor I
before you." But it is vain for the lamb to plead with the wolf. She was
condemned to die. She listened to her sentence with the most perfect
composure, and almost with satisfaction. The only favor she asked was,
that she might see a priest, and receive the consolations of religion,
according to the faith she professed. Even this request was denied her.
The crime of loyalty was of too deep a dye to allow of any, the
slightest, mitigation of punishment. From the judgment hall she was led
down into one of the dungeons of the Conciergerie, where, with the rest
of her companions, she awaited the execution of their doom. It was,
indeed, a melancholy meeting. These illustrious captives had formerly
dwelt in the highest splendor which earth allows. They had met in regal
palaces, surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of courts. Now, after
months of the most cruel imprisonment, after passing through scenes of
the most protracted woe, having been deprived of all their possessions,
of all their ancestral honors, having surrendered one after another of
those most dear to them to the guillotine, they were collected in a dark
and foul dungeon, cold and wet, hungry and exhausted, to be conveyed
in a few hours, in the cart of the condemned, to the scaffold. The
character of Elizabeth was such, her weanedness from the world, her mild
and he