her tears and her dangers.  She was sometimes obliged to be absent in order to go to the Chateau de Vernon to watch over the old Duc de Penthievre.  The queen, who foresaw the coming storm, had written to her some days before the 20th of June a touching letter, entreating her not to return.  This letter, found in the hair of the Princesse de Lamballe after her assassination, and unknown until now, discloses the tenderness of the one and the devotion of the other.

“Do not leave Vernon, my dear Lamballe, before you are perfectly recovered.  The good Duc de Penthievre would be sorry and distressed, and we must all take care of his advanced age, and respect his virtues.  I have so often told you to take heed of yourself, that if you love me you must think of yourself; we shall require all our strength in the times in which we live.  Oh do not return, or return as late as possible.  Your heart would be too deeply wounded; you would have too many tears to shed over my misfortunes, you who love me so tenderly.  This race of tigers which infests the kingdom would cruelly enjoy itself if it knew all the sufferings we undergo.  Adieu, my dear Lamballe; I am always thinking of you, and you know I never change.”

Madame Lamballe, contrary to this advice, made all haste to return, and clung to the queen as though she sought to be struck with the same blow.  By her side were also other courageous women,—­the Princesse de Tarente, Latremouille, Mesdames de Tourzel, de Mackau, de La Roche-Aymon.

M. de Lajard, a cool soldier, responsible to the king and himself for so many dear and sacred lives, collected in haste by the secret passages which communicated with the sleeping chamber and the interior of the palace, several officers and national guards wandering about in the tumult.  He had the queen’s children brought to her, in order that their presence and appearance, by softening the mob, might serve as a buckler to their mother.  He himself opened the doors.  He placed the queen and her ladies in the depth of the window.  They wheeled in front of this the massive council-table, in order to interpose a barrier between the weapons of the malcontents and the lives of the royal family.  Some national guards were around the table on each side, and rather in advance of it.  The queen, standing up, held by the hand her daughter, then fourteen years of age.

A child of noble beauty and precocious maturity, the anxieties of the family in the midst of whom she had grown up had already reflected their weight and sorrow in her features.  Her blue eyes, her lofty brow, aquiline nose, light brown hair, floating in long waves down her shoulders, recalled at the decline of the monarchy those young girls of the Gauls who graced the throne of the earlier races.  The young daughter pressed closely against her mother’s bosom, as though to shield her with her innocence.  Born amidst the early tumults of the Revolution, dragged to Paris captive amidst the blood of the 6th of October,