woke her up to announce that they had come to conduct her to the common prison.  Her sister and her daughter begged in vain to be allowed to accompany her.  She herself scarcely spoke a word, but dressed herself in silence, made up a small bundle of clothes, and, after a few words of farewell and comfort to those dear ones who had hitherto been her companions, followed her jailers unresistingly, knowing, and for her own sake certainly not grieving, that she was going to meet her doom.  As she passed through the outer door it was so low that she struck her head.  One of the commissioners had so much decency left as to ask if she was hurt.  “No,” she replied, “nothing now can hurt me.[10]” Six weeks later, an English gentleman saw her in her dungeon.  She was freely exhibited to any one who desired to behold her, on the sole condition—­a condition worthy of the monsters who exacted it, and of them alone—­that he should show no sign of sympathy or sorrow.[11] “She was sitting on an old worn-out chair made of straw which scarcely supported her weight.  Dressed in a gown which had once been white, her attitude bespoke the immensity of her grief, which appeared to have created a kind of stupor, that fortunately rendered her less sensible to the injuries and reproaches which a number of inhuman wretches were continually vomiting forth against her.”

Even after all the atrocities and horrors of the last twelve months, the news of the resolution to bring her to a trial, which, it was impossible to doubt, it was intended to follow up by her execution, was received as a shook by the great bulk of the nation, as indeed by all Europe.  And Necker’s daughter, Madame de Stael, who, as we have seen, had been formerly desirous to aid in her escape, now addressed an energetic and eloquent appeal to the entire people, calling on all persons of all parties, “Republicans, Constitutionalists, and Aristocrats alike, to unite for her preservation.”  She left unemployed no fervor of entreaty, no depth of argument.  She reminded them of the universal admiration which the queen’s beauty and grace had formerly excited, when “all France thought itself laid under an obligation by her charms;[12]” of the affection that she had won by her ceaseless acts of beneficence and generosity.  She showed the absurdity of denouncing her as “the Austrian”—­her who had left Vienna while still little more than a child, and had ever since fixed her heart as well as her home in France.  She argued truly that the vagueness, the ridiculousness, the notorious falsehood of the accusations brought against her were in themselves her all-sufficient defense.  She showed how useless to every party and in every point of view must be her condemnation.  What danger could any one apprehend from restoring to liberty a princess whose every thought was tenderness and pity?  She reproached those who now held sway in France with the barbarity of their proscriptions, with governing by terror and by death,