o you, like indeed to what they
were, but far short of the reality. Cowardly and cruel men, why did
you stop in your frenzy of murder? It would have been better to drink
that last drop of royal blood, than to mingle it with gall and venom
and poison; it would have been better to smother the child, as was
done by the emissaries of Richard III. in the Tower of London, than to
degrade and sully his intellect by that slow method of assassination
which killed the mind before it slew the body. He should have been
struck a year or two before; his little feet should have been aided to
mount the rude steps of the guillotine! Ah, if she could have known
the fate you were reserving for him, the daughter of Maria-Theresa
would have asked to take her child in her arms: she would have shared
her very last victory with him; and the angels would have prepared at
once the crown of the martyred and that of the innocent victim! Alas,
history is fain to regret for Louis XVII. the scaffold of his mother!"

But the end of the torture was very near. Robespierre fell, and Simon,
the Barbarous, accompanied him in the same tumbril to the guillotine,
and shared his fate. Barras, the new dictator, made it almost his
first care to visit the Temple; and, from what his colleagues and
himself saw there, they came to the conclusion that some more
judicious control was needed than that of the rough guards who had
charge of the royal children--that a permanent agent must be appointed
to watch the watchers. Accordingly, without consulting him, they
delegated the citizen Laurent to take charge of the dauphin and his
sister. Laurent was a humane man, and accepted the appointment
willingly. Indeed he dared not have refused it; but, in common with
the rest of the public, he had heard that the boy was miserably ill
and was totally uncared for, and seems to have had a notion that he
could better his condition.

He arrived at the Temple in the evening; but, having no idea of the
real state of the child, he did not visit his little prisoner until
the guard was changed at two o'clock in the morning. When he arrived
at the entrance-door, the foul smell emanating therefrom almost drove
him back. But he was forced to overcome his repugnance; for when the
municipals battered at the little wicket, and shouted for Capet, no
Capet responded. At last, after having been frequently called, a
feeble voice answered "Yes;" but there was no motion on the part of
the speaker.