as the Revolutionary
dress; and one day, when his mother obtained a glimpse of him as he was
walking on the leads of the tower to which he had been transferred, it
caused her an additional pang to see that he had been stripped of the suit
of mourning for his father, and had been clothed in the garments which, in
her eyes, were the symbol, of all that was most impious and most
loathsome.

All these outrages were but the prelude of the final blow which was to
fall on herself; and it shows how great was the fear with which her lofty
resolution had always had inspired the Jacobins--fear with such natures
being always the greatest exasperation of hatred and the keenest incentive
to cruelty--that, when they had resolved to consummate her injuries by her
murder, they did not leave her in the Temple as they had left her husband,
but removed her to the Conciergerie, which in those days, fitly
denominated the Reign of Terror, rarely led but to the scaffold. On the
night of the 1st of August (the darkest hours were appropriately chosen
for deeds of such darkness) another body of commissioners entered her
room, and woke her up to announce that they had come to conduct her to the
common prison. Her sister and her daughter begged in vain to be allowed to
accompany her. She herself scarcely spoke a word, but dressed herself in
silence, made up a small bundle of clothes, and, after a few words of
farewell and comfort to those dear ones who had hitherto been her
companions, followed her jailers unresistingly, knowing, and for her own
sake certainly not grieving, that she was going to meet her doom. As she
passed through the outer door it was so low that she struck her head. One
of the commissioners had so much decency left as to ask if she was hurt.
"No," she replied, "nothing now can hurt me.[10]" Six weeks later, an
English gentleman saw her in her dungeon. She was freely exhibited to any
one who desired to behold her, on the sole condition--a condition worthy
of the monsters who exacted it, and of them alone--that he should show no
sign of sympathy or sorrow.[11] "She was sitting on an old worn-out chair
made of straw which scarcely supported her weight. Dressed in a gown which
had once been white, her attitude bespoke the immensity of her grief,
which appeared to have created a kind of stupor, that fortunately rendered
her less sensible to the injuries and reproaches which a number of inhuman
wretches were continually vomiting forth