Marie Antoinette — Volume 07 eBook

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 100 pages of information about Marie Antoinette — Volume 07.

Marie Antoinette — Volume 07 eBook

Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 100 pages of information about Marie Antoinette — Volume 07.

At first the change to a cheerful and airy room revived the Prince and gave him evident pleasure, but the improvement did not last.  Next day M. Pelletan learned that the Government had acceded to his request for a colleague.  M. Dumangin, head physician of the Hospice de l’Unite, made his appearance at his house on the morning of Sunday, 7th June, with the official despatch sent him by the committee of public safety.  They repaired together immediately to the Tower.  On their arrival they heard that the child, whose weakness was excessive, had had a fainting fit, which had occasioned fears to be entertained that his end was approaching.  He had revived a little, however, when the physicians went up at about nine o’clock.  Unable to contend with increasing exhaustion, they perceived there was no longer any hope of prolonging an existence worn out by so much suffering, and that all their art could effect would be to soften the last stage of this lamentable disease.  While standing by the Prince’s bed, Gomin noticed that he was quietly crying, and asked him. kindly what was the matter.  “I am always alone,” he said.  “My dear mother remains in the other tower.”  Night came,—­his last night,—­which the regulations of the prison condemned him to pass once more in solitude, with suffering, his old companion, only at his side.  This time, however, death, too, stood at his pillow.  When Gomin went up to the child’s room on the morning of 8th June, he said, seeing him calm, motionless, and mute: 

“I hope you are not in pain just now?”

“Oh, yes, I am still in pain, but not nearly so much,—­the music is so beautiful!”

Now there was no music to be heard, either in the Tower or anywhere near.

Gomin, astonished, said to him, “From what direction do you hear this music?”

“From above!”

“Have you heard it long?”

“Since you knelt down.  Do you not hear it?  Listen!  Listen!” And the child, with a nervous motion, raised his faltering hand, as he opened his large eyes illuminated by delight.  His poor keeper, unwilling to destroy this last sweet illusion, appeared to listen also.

After a few minutes of attention the child again started, and cried out, in intense rapture, “Amongst all the voices I have distinguished that of my mother!”

These were almost his last words.  At a quarter past two he died, Lasne only being in the room at the time.  Lasne acquainted Gomin and Damont, the commissary on duty, with the event, and they repaired to the chamber of death.  The poor little royal corpse was carried from the room into that where he had suffered so long,—­where for two years he had never ceased to suffer.  From this apartment the father had gone to the scaffold, and thence the son must pass to the burial-ground.  The remains were laid out on the bed, and the doors of the apartment were set open,—­doors which had remained closed ever since the Revolution had seized on a child, then full of vigour and grace and life and health!

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Marie Antoinette — Volume 07 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.