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Assembly, in the midst of which he stood. Of all the extravagances ever
conceived--of all the insolences of power--of all the licenses of
popular licentiousness, this was the most daring, unrivalled, and
unimagined; and yet this was carried, with scarcely a voice raised
against it. The trembling president, with the dagger at his throat, put
the motion for extinguishing the throne, the cabinet, and calling a new
Assembly! From that hour the monarchy was no more.

During this tremendous discussion, I had not ventured to raise my eyes
towards the royal family; but, as all were now about to retire, I dared
a single glance. The king was slowly leaving the box, leading the
dauphin by the hand; the Princess Elizabeth was carrying the sleeping
dauphiness in her arms; the queen stayed behind, alone, for a moment,
sitting, as she had done for hours, with her eyes fixed on vacancy, and
her countenance calm, but corpselike. At length she seemed to recollect
that she was alone, and suddenly started up. Then nature had its way;
she tottered, and fainted. From that night forth, that glorious creature
never saw the light of day but through the bars of a prison. From the
Feuillans, the royal family were consigned to the cells of the Temple,
from which Louis and Marie Antoinette never emerged but to the grave!

This night taught me a lesson, which neither time nor circumstance has
ever made me forget. It cured me of all my republican fantasies at once,
and for ever. I believe myself above the affectation of romantic
sensibility. But it would not be less affectation to deny the feelings
to which that awful scene of human guilt and human suffering gave birth.
If the memory of the popular atrocities made me almost abhor human
nature, the memory of that innocent and illustrious woman restored my
admiration of the noble qualities that may still be found in human
nature. "If I forget thee even in my mirth," the language of the
Israelite to his beloved city, was mine, in scarcely a less solemn or
sacred spirit, in those hours of early experience. Let the hearts and
eyes of others refuse to acknowledge such feelings. I am not ashamed to
say, that I have shed many a tear over the fate of the King and Queen of
France. In the finest fictions of genius, in the most high-wrought
sorrows of the stage, I have never been so deeply touched, I have never
felt myself penetrated with such true and irresistible emotion, as in
reading, many a year after, t