had
placed him. The men threatened to call up the guard and use violence. My
mother exclaimed that they had better kill her than tear her child from
her. At last they threatened our lives, and my mother's maternal
tenderness forced her to the sacrifice. My aunt and I dressed the child,
for my poor mother had no longer strength for anything. Nevertheless, when
he was dressed, she took him up in her arms and delivered him herself to
the officers, bathing him with her tears, foreseeing that she was never to
behold him again. The poor little fellow embraced us all tenderly, and
was carried away in a flood of tears. My mother's horror was extreme when
she heard that Simon, a shoemaker by trade, whom she had seen as a
municipal officer in the Temple, was the person to whom her child was
confided . . . . The officers now no longer remained in my mother's
apartment; they only came three times a day to bring our meals and examine
the bolts and bars of our windows; we were locked up together night and
day. We often went up to the Tower, because my brother went, too, from
the other side. The only pleasure my mother enjoyed was seeing him
through a crevice as he passed at a distance. She would watch for hours
together to see him as he passed. It was her only hope, her only
thought."

The Queen was soon deprived even of this melancholy consolation. On 1st
August, 1793, it was resolved that she should be tried. Robespierre
opposed the measure, but Barere roused into action that deep-rooted hatred
of the Queen which not even the sacrifice of her life availed to
eradicate. "Why do the enemies of the Republic still hope for success?"
he asked. "Is it because we have too long forgotten the crimes of the
Austrian? The children of Louis the Conspirator are hostages for the
Republic . . .but behind them lurks a woman who has been the cause of
all the disasters of France."

At two o'clock on the morning of the following day, the municipal officers
"awoke us," says Madame Royale, "to read to my mother the decree of the
Convention, which ordered her removal to the Conciergerie,

[The Conciergerie was originally, as its name implies, the porter's lodge
of the ancient Palace of Justice, and became in time a prison, from the
custom of confining there persons who had committed trifling offences
about the Court.]

preparatory to her trial. She heard it without visible emotion, and
without speaking a single word. My aunt a