and in the fatal
list. She fell senseless to the floor in a long-continued swoon. When
consciousness returned, she exclaimed at first, in the delirium of her
anguish, "O God, let me die! let me die! There is no peace for me but in
the grave." And then again a mother's love, as she thought of her orphan
children, led her to cling to the misery of existence for their sake.
Soon, however, the unpitying agents of the revolutionary tribunal came
to her with the announcement that in two days she was to be led to the
Conciergerie, and thence to her execution.

In the following letter Josephine informed her children of the death of
their father, and of her own approaching execution. It is a letter
highly characteristic of this wonderful woman in the attempt, by the
assumption of calmness, to avoid as far as possible lacerating the
feelings of Eugene and Hortense.

"The hand which will deliver this to you is faithful and sure. You will
receive it from a friend who knows and has shared my sorrows. I know not
by what accident she has hitherto been spared. I call this accident
fortunate; she regards it as a calamity. 'Is it not disgraceful to
live,' said she yesterday, 'when all who are good have the honor of
dying?' May Heaven, as the reward of her courage, refuse her the fatal
honor she desires.

"As to me, I am qualified for that honor, and I am preparing myself for
receiving it. Why has disease spared me so long? But I must not murmur.
As a wife, I ought to follow the fate of my husband, and can there now
be any fate more glorious than to ascend the scaffold? It is a patent of
immortality, purchased by a prompt and pleasing death.

"My children, your father is dead, and your mother is about to follow
him. But as before that final stroke the assassins leave me a few
moments to myself, I wish to employ them in writing to you. Socrates,
when condemned, philosophized with his disciples. A mother, on the point
of undergoing a similar fate, may discourse with her children.

"My last sigh will be for you, and I wish to make my last words a
lasting lesson. Time was, when I gave you lessons in a more pleasing
way. But the present will not be the less useful, that it is given at so
serious a moment. I have the weakness to water it with my tears. I
shall soon have the courage to seal it with my blood.

"Hitherto it was impossible to be happier than I have been. While to my
union with your father I owed my felicity, I may venture to