previous to the fatal catastrophe, when permitted for the last time to see his family, the Princesse Elizabeth whispered him, not for herself, but for the Queen and his helpless innocents, to remember his intentions.  He said he should not feel himself happy if, in his last hour, he did not give them a proof of his paternal affection, in obtaining an assurance that the sacrifice of his life should be the guarantee of theirs.  So intent was his mind upon this purpose, said Clery to me, that when his assassins came to take him to the slaughtering-place, he said, “I hope my death will appease the nation, and that my innocent family, who have suffered on my account, will now be released.”

The ruffians answered, “The nation, always magnanimous, only seeks to punish the guilty.  You may be assured your family will be respected.”  Events have proved how well they kept their word.

It was to fulfil the intention of recommending his family to the people with his dying breath that he commenced his address upon the scaffold, when Santerre ordered the drums to drown his last accents, and the axe to fall!

The Princesse Elizabeth, and perhaps others of the royal prisoners, hoped he would have been reprieved, till Herbert, that real ‘Pere du chene’, with a smile upon his countenance, came triumphantly to announce to the disconsolate family that Louis was no more!

Perhaps there never was a King more misrepresented and less understood, especially by the immediate age in which he lived, than Louis XVI.  He was the victim of natural timidity, increased by the horror of bloodshed, which the exigencies of the times rendered indispensable to his safety.  He appeared weak in intellect, when he was only so from circumstances.  An overwrought anxiety to be just made him hesitate about the mode of overcoming the abuses, until its procrastination had destroyed the object of his wishes.  He had courage sufficient, as well as decision, where others were not menaced and the danger was confined to himself; but, where his family or his people were involved, he was utterly unfit to give direction.  The want of self-sufficiency in his own faculties have been his, and his throne’s, ruin.  He consulted those who caused him to swerve from the path his own better reason had dictated, and, in seeking the best course, he often chose the worst.

The same fatal timidity which pervaded his character extended to his manners.  From being merely awkward, he at last became uncouth; but from the natural goodness of his heart, the nearest to him soon lost sight of his ungentleness from the rectitude of his intentions, and, to parody the poet, saw his deportment in his feelings.

Previous to the Revolution, Louis XVI. was generally considered gentle and affable, though never polished.  But the numberless outrages suffered by his Queen, his family, his friends, and himself, especially towards the close of his career, soured him to an air of rudeness, utterly foreign to his nature and to his intention.