[The Queen, after having written and prayed, slept soundly for some hours.  On her waking, Bault’s daughter dressed her and adjusted her hair with more neatness than on other days.  Marie Antoinette wore a white gown, a white handkerchief covered her shoulders, a white cap her hair; a black ribbon bound this cap round her temples ....  The cries, the looks, the laughter, the jests of the people overwhelmed her with humiliation; her colour, changing continually from purple to paleness, betrayed her agitation ....  On reaching the scaffold she inadvertently trod on the executioner’s foot.  “Pardon me,” she said, courteously.  She knelt for an instant and uttered a half-audible prayer; then rising and glancing towards the towers of the Temple, “Adieu, once again, my children,” she said; “I go to rejoin your father.”—­Lamartine.]

she was conducted, amidst a great concourse of the populace, to the fatal spot where, ten months before, Louis XVI. had perished.  She listened with calmness to the exhortations of the ecclesiastic who accompanied her, and cast an indifferent look at the people who had so often applauded her beauty and her grace, and who now as warmly applauded her execution.  On reaching the foot of the scaffold she perceived the Tuileries, and appeared to be moved; but she hastened to ascend the fatal ladder, and gave herself up with courage to the executioner.

[Sorrow had blanched the Queen’s once beautiful hair; but her features and air still commanded the admiration of all who beheld her; her cheeks, pale and emaciated, were occasionally tinged with a vivid colour at the mention of those she had lost.  When led out to execution, she was dressed in white; she had cut off her hair with her own hands.  Placed in a tumbrel, with her arms tied behind her, she was taken by a circuitous route to the Place de la Revolution, and she ascended the scaffold with a firm and dignified step, as if she had been about to take her place on a throne by the side of her husband.-LACRETELLE.]

The infamous wretch exhibited her head to the people, as he was accustomed to do when he had sacrificed an illustrious victim.

The Last Separation.—­Execution of Madame Elisabeth. 
—­Death of the Dauphin.

The two Princesses left in the Temple were now almost inconsolable; they spent days and nights in tears, whose only alleviation was that they were shed together.  “The company of my aunt, whom I loved so tenderly,” said Madame Royale, “was a great comfort to me.  But alas! all that I loved was perishing around me, and I was soon to lose her also . . . .  In the beginning of September I had an illness caused solely by my anxiety about my mother; I never heard a drum beat that I did not expect another 3d of September.”—­[when the head of the Princesse de Lamballe was carried to the Temple.]