Another row of Tumbrils we must notice:  that which holds Elizabeth, the Sister of Louis.  Her Trial was like the rest; for Plots, for Plots.  She was among the kindliest, most innocent of women.  There sat with her, amid four-and-twenty others, a once timorous Marchioness de Crussol; courageous now; expressing towards her the liveliest loyalty.  At the foot of the Scaffold, Elizabeth with tears in her eyes, thanked this Marchioness; said she was grieved she could not reward her.  “Ah, Madame, would your Royal Highness deign to embrace me, my wishes were complete!”—­“Right willingly, Marquise de Crussol, and with my whole heart.” (Montgaillard, iv. 200.) Thus they:  at the foot of the Scaffold.  The Royal Family is now reduced to two:  a girl and a little boy.  The boy, once named Dauphin, was taken from his Mother while she yet lived; and given to one Simon, by trade a Cordwainer, on service then about the Temple-Prison, to bring him up in principles of Sansculottism.  Simon taught him to drink, to swear, to sing the carmagnole.  Simon is now gone to the Municipality:  and the poor boy, hidden in a tower of the Temple, from which in his fright and bewilderment and early decrepitude he wishes not to stir out, lies perishing, ’his shirt not changed for six months;’ amid squalor and darkness, lamentably, (Duchesse d’Angouleme, Captivite a la Tour du Temple, pp. 37-71.)—­so as none but poor Factory Children and the like are wont to perish, unlamented!

The Spring sends its green leaves and bright weather, bright May brighter than ever:  Death pauses not.  Lavoisier famed Chemist, shall die and not live:  Chemist Lavoisier was Farmer-General Lavoisier too, and now ‘all the Farmers-General are arrested;’ all, and shall give an account of their monies and incomings; and die for ’putting water in the tobacco’ they sold. (Tribunal Revolutionnaire, du 8 Mai 1794, Moniteur, No. 231.) Lavoisier begged a fortnight more of life, to finish some experiments:  but “the Republic does not need such;” the axe must do its work.  Cynic Chamfort, reading these Inscriptions of Brotherhood or Death, says “it is a Brotherhood of Cain:”  arrested, then liberated; then about to be arrested again, this Chamfort cuts and slashes himself with frantic uncertain hand; gains, not without difficulty, the refuge of death.  Condorcet has lurked deep, these many months; Argus-eyes watching and searching for him.  His concealment is become dangerous to others and himself; he has to fly again, to skulk, round Paris, in thickets and stone-quarries.  And so at the Village of Clamars, one bleared May morning, there enters a Figure, ragged, rough-bearded, hunger-stricken; asks breakfast in the tavern there.  Suspect, by the look of him!  “Servant out of place, sayest thou?” Committee-President of Forty-Sous finds a Latin Horace on him:  “Art thou not one of those Ci-devants that were wont to keep servants?  Suspect!” He is haled forthwith, breakfast unfinished, towards Bourg-la-Reine, on foot:  he faints with exhaustion; is set on a peasant’s horse; is flung into his damp prison-cell:  on the morrow, recollecting him, you enter; Condorcet lies dead on the floor.  They die fast, and disappear:  the Notabilities of France disappear, one after one, like lights in a Theatre, which you are snuffing out.