The nearer the moment which was to decide the King’s fate approached, the greater became the agitation in, Paris.  “A report was circulated that the atrocities of September were to be repeated there, and the prisoners and their relatives beset the deputies with supplications that they would snatch them from destruction.  The Jacobins, on their part, alleged that conspiracies were hatching in all quarters to save Louis XVI. from punishment, and to restore royalty.  Their anger, excited by delays and obstacles, assumed a more threatening aspect; and the two parties thus alarmed one another by supposing that each harboured sinister designs.”

On the 14th of January the Convention called for the order of the day, being the final judgment of Louis XVI.

“The sitting of the Convention which concluded the trial,” says Hazlitt, “lasted seventy-two hours.  It might naturally be supposed that silence, restraint, a sort of religious awe, would have pervaded the scene.  On the contrary, everything bore the marks of gaiety, dissipation, and the most grotesque confusion.  The farther end of the hall was converted into boxes, where ladies, in a studied deshabille, swallowed ices, oranges, liqueurs, and received the salutations of the members who went and came, as on ordinary occasions.  Here the doorkeepers on the Mountain side opened and shut the boxes reserved for the mistresses of the Duc d’Orleans; and there, though every sound of approbation or disapprobation was strictly forbidden, you heard the long and indignant ‘Ha, ha’s!’ of the mother-duchess, the patroness of the bands of female Jacobins, whenever her ears were not loudly greeted with the welcome sounds of death.  The upper gallery, reserved for the people, was during the whole trial constantly full of strangers of every description, drinking wine as in a tavern.

“Bets were made as to the issue of the trial in all the neighbouring coffee-houses.  Ennui, impatience, disgust sat on almost every countenance.  The figures passing and repassing, rendered more ghastly by the pallid lights, and who in a slow, sepulchral voice pronounced only the word—­Death; others calculating if they should have time to go to dinner before they gave their verdict; women pricking cards with pins in order to count the votes; some of the deputies fallen asleep, and only waking up to give their sentence,—­all this had the appearance rather of a hideous dream than of a reality.”

The Duc d’Orleans, when called on to give his vote for the death of his King and relation, walked with a faltering step, and a face paler than death itself, to the appointed place, and there read these words:  “Exclusively governed by my duty, and convinced that all those who have resisted the sovereignty of the people deserve death, my vote is for death!” Important as the accession of the first Prince of the blood was to the Terrorist faction, his conduct in this instance was too obviously selfish and atrocious not to excite a general feeling of indignation; the agitation of the Assembly became extreme; it seemed as if by this single vote the fate of the monarch was irrevocably sealed.