The last period of the life of the queen, La Rocheterie calls the militant period—­it was one in which the joy of living was no more; trouble, sorrows upon sorrows, and anxieties replaced the former care-free, happy radiance of her youth.  At the reunion of the States-General, while the country at large was full of confidence and the king was still a hero, the queen was the one dark spot; calumny had done its work—­the whole country seemed to be saturated with an implacable hatred and prejudice against her whom they considered the source of all evil.  Throughout the ceremonies attending the States-General, the queen was received with the same ominous silence; no one lifted his voice to cheer her, but the Duc d’Orleans was always applauded, to her humiliation.

Whatever may have been the faults and excesses of her youth, their period was over and in their place arose all the noble sentiments so long dormant.  When the king was about to go to Paris as the prisoner of the infuriated mob, La Fayette asked the queen:  “Madame, what is your personal intention?” “I know the fate which awaits me, but my duty is to die at the feet of the king and in the arms of my children,” replied the queen.  During the following days of anxiety she showed wonderful courage and graciousness, “winning much popularity by her serene dignity, the incomparable charm which pervaded her whole person, and her affability.”

Upon the urgent request of the queen the Polignac set departed, and Mme. de Lamballe endeavored to do the honors for the queen, by receptions three times a week, given to make friends in the Assembly.  At those functions all conditions of people assembled, and instead of the witty, brilliant conversations of the old salon there were politics, conspiracies, plots; instead of the gay and laughing faces of the old times there were the worn and anxious faces of weary, discouraged men and women.  There was, indeed, a sad contrast between the gay, frivolous, haughty queen of the early days, and this captive queen—­submissive, dignified, “majestic in her bearing, heroic, and reconciled to her awful fate.”

Her period of imprisonment, the cruelty, neglect, inadequate food and garments, her torture and indescribable sufferings, the insults of the crowd and the newspapers, her heroic death, all belong to history.  “The first crime of the Revolution was the death of the king, but the most frightful was the death of the queen.”  Napoleon said:  “The queen’s death was a crime worse than regicide.”  “A crime absolutely unjustifiable,” adds La Rocheterie, “since it had no pretext whatever to offer as an excuse; a crime eminently impolitic, since it struck down a foreign princess, the most sacred of hostages; a crime beyond measure, since the victim was a woman who possessed honors without power.”