knelt down. Do you not hear it? Listen! Listen!" And the
child, with a nervous motion, raised his faltering hand, as he opened his
large eyes illuminated by delight. His poor keeper, unwilling to destroy
this last sweet illusion, appeared to listen also.

After a few minutes of attention the child again started, and cried out,
in intense rapture, "Amongst all the voices I have distinguished that of
my mother!"

These were almost his last words. At a quarter past two he died, Lasne
only being in the room at the time. Lasne acquainted Gomin and Damont,
the commissary on duty, with the event, and they repaired to the chamber
of death. The poor little royal corpse was carried from the room into
that where he had suffered so long,--where for two years he had never
ceased to suffer. From this apartment the father had gone to the
scaffold, and thence the son must pass to the burial-ground. The remains
were laid out on the bed, and the doors of the apartment were set
open,--doors which had remained closed ever since the Revolution had
seized on a child, then full of vigour and grace and life and health!

At eight o'clock next morning (9th June) four members of the committee of
general safety came to the Tower to make sure that the Prince was really
dead. When they were admitted to the death-chamber by Lasne and Damont
they affected the greatest indifference. "The event is not of the least
importance," they repeated, several times over; "the police commissary of
the section will come and receive the declaration of the decease; he will
acknowledge it, and proceed to the interment without any ceremony; and the
committee will give the necessary directions." As they withdrew, some
officers of the Temple guard asked to see the remains of little Capet.
Damont having observed that the guard would not permit the bier to pass
without its being opened, the deputies decided that the officers and
non-commissioned officers of the guard going off duty, together with those
coming on, should be all invited to assure themselves of the child's
death. All having assembled in the room where the body lay, he asked them
if they recognised it as that of the ex-Dauphin, son of the last King of
France. Those who had seen the young Prince at the Tuileries, or at the
Temple (and most of them had), bore witness to its being the body of Louis
XVII. When they were come down into the council-room, Darlot drew up the
minutes of this attestati