The end did not come so swiftly for the queen, who, after being removed from the Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in the dark cell in that abode of horrors, the Conciergerie.  Then came the trial, the inquisitorial trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom of that dimly lighted hall.  And at half-past four in the morning she heard without a tremor the terrible words, “Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis Capet, the Tribunal condemns you to die.”  Not for a moment did this intrepid woman quail; and a small detail brings before us vividly her wonderful calmness.  As she reached the stairs in her pitiful return to her cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the gendarmes, who was at her side, “Monsieur, I can scarcely see (Je vois a peine); will you lead me?”

In another half hour the drums were beating in every quarter in preparation for the event; and at ten o’clock she started upon her last ride.  And how bravely she met her awful fate!  We forget her follies, her reckless extravagances, in admiration for her courage as she rides to her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting in that hideous tumbril, head erect, pale, proud, defiant, as if upon a throne (October 16, 1793).

The search-light of scrutiny has been turned upon this unfortunate woman for more than a century, and all that has been discovered is that she was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and absolutely ignorant of the gravity of her responsibility in the position she occupied.

In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman of her period would have done under the same circumstances—­not better, and not worse.  But when the time came to try her soul and test her mettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassing belief.

If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamond necklace—­a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis—­it would certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not.  It will be remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from the reign of Louis XV., who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was to cost a sum large enough for a king’s ransom.  The king died before it was completed, and the story became current that Marie Antoinette, the hated Austrian woman who was ruining France by her extravagance, was negotiating for the purchase of this necklace while the people were starving!

A network of villainy is woven about the whole incident, in which the names of a cardinal and ladies high in rank are involved.  The mystery may never be uncovered, but every effort to connect the queen’s name with this historic scandal has failed.