avenly spirit, as to have secured almost the idolatrous veneration
of those who knew her. The companions of her misfortunes now clustered
around her, as the one to whom they must look for support and strength
in this awful hour. The princess, more calm and peaceful even than when
surrounded by all the splendors of royalty, looked forward joyfully to
the guillotine as the couch of sweet and lasting repose. Faith enabled
her to leave the children, now the only tie which bound her to earth, in
the hands of God, and, conscious that she had done with all things
earthly, her thoughts were directed to those mansions of rest which,
she doubted not, were in reserve for her. She bowed her head with a
smile to the executioner as he cut off her long tresses in preparation
for the knife. The locks fell at her feet, and even the executioners
divided them among them as memorials of her loveliness and virtue.

Her hands were bound behind her, and she was placed in the cart with
twenty-two companions of noble birth, and she was doomed to wait at the
foot of the scaffold till all those heads had fallen, before her turn
could come. The youth, the beauty, the innocence, the spotless life of
the princess seemed to disarm the populace of their rage, and they gazed
upon her in silence and almost with admiration. Her name had ever been
connected with every thing that was pure and kind. And even a feeling of
remorse seemed to pervade the concourse surrounding the scaffold in view
of the sacrifice of so blameless a victim.

One by one, as the condemned ascended the steps of the guillotine to
submit to the dreadful execution, they approached Elizabeth and
encircled her in an affectionate embrace. At last every head had fallen
beneath the ax but that of Elizabeth. The mutilated bodies were before
her. The gory heads of those she loved were in a pile by her side. It
was a sight to shock the stoutest nerves. But the princess, sustained
by that Christian faith which had supported her through her almost
unparalleled woes, apparently without a tremor ascended the steps,
looked calmly and benignantly around upon the vast multitude, as if in
her heart she was imploring God's blessing upon them, and surrendered
herself to the executioner. Probably not a purer spirit nor one more
attuned for heaven existed in France than the one which then ascended
from the scaffold, we trust, to the bosom of God. Maria Antoinette died
with the pride and the firmness of th