From the 11th of August the life of Marie Antoinette is almost a blank to us.  We may be even thankful that it is so, and that we are spared the details, in all their accumulated miseries, of a series of events which are a disgrace to human nature.  For month after month the gentle, benevolent king, whom no sovereign ever exceeded in love for his people, or in the exercise of every private virtue; the equally pure-minded, charitable, and patriotic queen, who, to the somewhat passive excellences of her husband added fascinating graces and lofty energies of which he was unhappily destitute, were subjected to the most disgusting indignities, to the tyranny of the vilest monsters who ever usurped authority over a nation, and to the daily insults of the meanest of their former subjects, who thought to make a merit with their new masters of their brutality to those whose birthright had been the submission and reverence of all around them.

Vergniaud’s motion had only extended to the suspension of the king from his functions till the meeting of the Convention; but no one could doubt that that suspension would never be taken off, and that Louis was in fact dethroned.  Marie Antoinette never deceived herself on the point, and, retaining the opinion as to the fate of deposed monarchs which she had expressed three years before, pronounced that all was over with them.  “My poor children,” said she, apostrophizing the little dauphin and his sister, “it is cruel to give up the hope of transmitting to you so noble an inheritance, and to have to say that all is at an end with ourselves;” and, lest any one else should have any doubt on the subject, the Assembly no longer headed its decrees with any royal title, but published them in the name of the nation.  In one point the resolutions of the 10th were slightly departed from.  The municipal authorities reported that the Luxembourg had so many outlets and subterranean passages, that it would be difficult to prevent the escape of a prisoner from that palace; and accordingly the destination of the royal family was changed to the Temple.  Thither, after having been compelled to spend two more days in the Assembly, listening to the denunciations and threats of their enemies, whom even the knowledge that they were wholly in their power failed to pacify, they were conveyed on the 13th; and they never quit it till they were dragged forth to die.

The Temple had been, as its name imported, the fortress and palace of the Knights Templars, and, having been erected by them in the palmy days of their wealth and magnificence, contained spacious apartments, and extensive gardens protected from intrusion by a lofty wall, which surrounded the whole.  It was not, unfit for, nor unaccustomed to, the reception of princes; for the Count d’Artois had fitted up a portion of it for himself whenever he visited the capital.  And to his apartments those who had the custody of the king and queen at first conducted them.  But