he tumult of the mob outside. A faint illumination
announces the approach of day; it is the last she has to live!
Seating herself at a table she writes, with hurried hand, a last
letter of ardent tenderness to the sister of her husband, the pious
Madame Elizabeth, and to her children; and now she passionately
presses the insensible paper to her lips, as the sole remaining link
between those dear ones and herself. She stops, sighs, and throws
herself upon her miserable pallet. What! in such an hour as this can
the queen sleep? Even so!

And now look up, daughter of the Caesars! Thou art waked from dreams
of hope and light, from the imaged embrace of thy beloved Louis, thy
tender infants, by a kind voice, choked by tears. Arise! emancipated
one, thy prison doors are open. Freedom, freedom is at hand!

Immediately in front of the palace of the Tuileries--scene of the
short months of her wedded happiness--there rises a dark, ominous
mass. Around is a sea of human faces; above, the cold frown of a
winter's sky. With a firm step the victim ascends the stairs of the
scaffold, her white garments wave in the chill breeze, a black ribbon
by which her cap is confined beats to and fro against her pale cheeks.
You may see that she is unmindful of her executioners--she glances,
nay, almost smiles, at the sharp edge of the guillotine, and then
turning her eyes toward the Temple, utters, in a few agitated words,
her last earthly farewell to Louis and her children. There is a
hush--a stillness of the grave--for the very headsman trembles as the
horrible blade falls--anon, a moment's delay. And now, look! No,
rather veil your eyes from the dreadful sight; close your ears to that
fiendish shout--_Vive la Republique!_ It is over! the sacrifice is
accomplished! the weary spirit is at rest!

Let us dwell upon this last mournful pageant only sufficiently far
as to imitate the virtues, and emulate the firmness and resignation
with which she met her doom. Nothing is permitted without a meaning,
all is for either warning or example; and while breathing a prayer
that Heaven may avert a recurrence of such outrages, let us remember
that moral indecision, the undue love of pleasure, and an aimless,
profitless mode of life, as surely, and not less fatally, may raise
the surging tide of events no human skill can quell, as the most
selfish abandonment to uncontrolled desires.

ANDREAS HOFER

(1767-1810)

Andreas Hofer, a native of the v