preparatory to her trial.  She heard it without visible emotion, and without speaking a single word.  My aunt and I immediately asked to be allowed to accompany my mother, but this favour was refused us.  All the time my mother was making up a bundle of clothes to take with her, these officers never left her.  She was even obliged to dress herself before them, and they asked for her pockets, taking away the trifles they contained.  She embraced me, charging me to keep up my spirits and my courage, to take tender care of my aunt, and obey her as a second mother.  She then threw herself into my aunt’s arms, and recommended her children to her care; my aunt replied to her in a whisper, and she was then hurried away.  In leaving the Temple she struck her head against the wicket, not having stooped low enough.

[Mathieu, the gaoler, used to say, “I make Madame Veto and her sister and daughter, proud though they are, salute me; for the door is so low they cannot pass without bowing.”]

The officers asked whether she had hurt herself.  ‘No,’ she replied, ’nothing can hurt me now.”

The Last Moments of Marie Antoinette.

We have already seen what changes had been made in the Temple.  Marie Antoinette had been separated from her sister, her daughter, and her Son, by virtue of a decree which ordered the trial and exile of the last members of the family of the Bourbons.  She had been removed to the Conciergerie, and there, alone in a narrow prison, she was reduced to what was strictly necessary, like the other prisoners.  The imprudence of a devoted friend had rendered her situation still more irksome.  Michonnis, a member of the municipality, in whom she had excited a warm interest, was desirous of introducing to her a person who, he said, wished to see her out of curiosity.  This man, a courageous emigrant, threw to her a carnation, in which was enclosed a slip of very fine paper with these words:  “Your friends are ready,”—­false hope, and equally dangerous for her who received it, and for him who gave it!  Michonnis and the emigrant were detected and forthwith apprehended; and the vigilance exercised in regard to the unfortunate prisoner became from that day more rigorous than ever.

[The Queen was lodged in a room called the council chamber, which was considered as the moat unwholesome apartment in the Conciergerie on account of its dampness and the bad smells by which it was continually affected.  Under pretence of giving her a person to wait upon her they placed near her a spy,—­a man of a horrible countenance and hollow, sepulchral voice.  This wretch, whose name was Barassin, was a robber and murderer by profession.  Such was the chosen attendant on the Queen of France!  A few days before her trial this wretch was removed and a gendarme placed in her chamber, who watched over her night and day, and from whom she was not separated, even when in bed, but by a ragged curtain.  In this melancholy abode Marie Antoinette had no other dress than an old black gown, stockings with holes, which she was forced to mend every day; and she was entirely destitute of shoes.—­Du broca.]