. She heard the footsteps of the ruffian
rabble; she thought her time had come, but her life was saved. The
progress of the ruffians was arrested at the very door of her
chamber, where her faithful guardsmen laid down their lives to secure
for their queen a retreat to the chamber of the king. The king and
queen showed themselves, with their children, in the balcony. The mass
of heads beneath for a moment ceased to be agitated; but it was only
for a moment. Silence was broken by a thousand tongues--"No
children--no children! The queen! the queen alone!"

This was a trying moment; but Antoinette had firmness for the crisis.
Putting her son and daughter into her husband's arms, she advanced
alone into the balcony. A spectacle like this filled the fierce people
with admiration, and thundering sounds of "_Vive la Reine!_" succeeded
to the imprecations of the preceding moment. Such is the fickleness of
a mob! The march to Paris was a succession of terrors! The heads of
the two faithful guardsmen, elevated on pikes, met the eyes of the
poor queen as she looked from her carriage windows.

The fate of Antoinette darkened rapidly. With the king, she fled to
Varennes--with him was brought back to Paris. Her courage did not fail
in the scene of the Legislative Assembly, before which body she was
present with her husband, heard his deposition pronounced, and then
went into the Temple, where he was imprisoned. Here, where the light
of heaven faintly fell through grated windows, surrounded by her
family, she appeared to feel entire resignation to the will of Him on
whom the happiness of the humblest individual depends. When she heard
the condemnation of the king from the lips of the royal victim, she
had the firmness to congratulate him on the speedy delivery from
trouble that awaited him. Her eternal separation from her son did not
shake her firmness, and, with a heart apparently unbroken, she was
consigned to the loathsome depths of a dungeon, August 5th, 1793.

The accusations brought against the unhappy queen, on her trial, were
all unfounded, and merely advanced because her enemies had still
respect enough for justice to mimic its forms in their guilty court.
She was charged with having squandered the public money, and with
leaguing in secret with the common enemies of France. The clearness of
her innocence, the falsehood and frivolity of the witnesses, the
eloquence of the defenders, and her own noble bearing, were of no
avai