her.  She begged them rather to kill her than take her son.  They would not kill her, but they swore that they would murder both him and her daughter before her eyes if he were not at once surrendered.  There was no more resistance.  His aunt and sister took him from the bed and dressed him.  His mother, with a voice choked by her sobs, addressed him the last words he was ever to hear from her.  “My child, they are taking you from me; never forget the mother who loves you tenderly, and never forget God!  Be good, gentle, and honest, and your father will look down on you from heaven and bless you!” “Have you done with this preaching?” said the chief commissioner.  “You have abused our patience finely,” another added; “the nation is generous, and will take care of his education.”  But she had fainted, and heard not these words of mocking cruelty.  Nothing could touch her further.

If it be not also a mockery to speak of happiness in connection with this most afflicted queen, she was happy in at least not knowing the details of the education which was in store for the noble boy whose birth had apparently secured for him the most splendid of positions, and whose opening virtues seemed to give every promise that he would be worthy of his rank and of his mother.  A few days afterward Simon received his instructions from a committee of the Convention, of which Drouet, the postmaster of Ste. Menehould, was the chief.  “How was he to treat the wolf cub?” he asked (it was one of the mildest names he ever gave him).  “Was he to kill him?” “No.”  “To poison him?” “No.”  “What then?” “He was to get rid of him,[9]” and Simon carried out this instruction by the most unremitting ill-treatment of his pupil.  He imposed upon him the most menial offices; he made him clean his shoes; he reviled him; he beat him; he compelled him to wear the red cap and jacket which had been adopted as the Revolutionary dress; and one day, when his mother obtained a glimpse of him as he was walking on the leads of the tower to which he had been transferred, it caused her an additional pang to see that he had been stripped of the suit of mourning for his father, and had been clothed in the garments which, in her eyes, were the symbol, of all that was most impious and most loathsome.

All these outrages were but the prelude of the final blow which was to fall on herself; and it shows how great was the fear with which her lofty resolution had always had inspired the Jacobins—­fear with such natures being always the greatest exasperation of hatred and the keenest incentive to cruelty—­that, when they had resolved to consummate her injuries by her murder, they did not leave her in the Temple as they had left her husband, but removed her to the Conciergerie, which in those days, fitly denominated the Reign of Terror, rarely led but to the scaffold.  On the night of the 1st of August (the darkest hours were appropriately chosen for deeds of such darkness) another body of commissioners entered her room, and