The Widow Capet needs no milliner now; she needs no friseur now for her toilette.  Her tall, slim figure is draped in a black woollen dress, which the republic at her request has granted her to mourn her beheaded husband; her neck and shoulders, once the admiration of France, are now covered with a white muslin kerchief, which in pity Bault, her attendant at the jail, has given her.  Her hair is uncovered, and falls in long natural curls on either side of her transparent, blanched cheeks.  This hair needs no powder now; the long sleepless nights, the anxious days, have covered it with their powder forever, and the thirty-eight-year-old widow of Louis Capet wears on her head the gray hairs of a seventy-year-old woman.

In this toilet, Marie Antoinette stands before the tribunal of the revolution from the 6th to the 13th day of October.  There is nothing royal about her, nothing but her look and the proud attitude of her figure.

And the people who fill the galleries in closely-packed masses, and who weary not to gaze on the queen in her humiliation, in her toilet of anguish, the people claim constantly that Marie Antoinette will rise from her rush-woven seat; that she will allow herself to be stared at by these masses of people, whom curiosity and not compassion have brought there.

Once, as at the call from the public in the galleries, she rose up, the queen sighed:  “Ah, will not the people soon be tired of my sufferings?” [Footnote:  Marie Antoinette’s own words.—­See Goncourt, “Histoire de Marie Antoinette,” p. 404.]

Another time her dry, blanched lips murmured, “I thirst.”  But no one near her dares have compassion on this sigh of agony from the queen; each looks embarrassed at his neighbor; not one dares give a glass of water to the thirsty woman.

One of the gendarmes has at last the courage to do so, and Marie Antoinette thanks him with a look which brings tears in the eyes of the gendarme, and which may perchance cause his death to-morrow under the guillotine as a traitor!

The gendarmes who guard the queen have alone the courage to show pity!

One night, as she is led from the hall of trial to her prison, Marie Antoinette becomes so exhausted, so overpowered, that staggering, she murmurs, “I can see no longer!  I can go no farther!  I cannot move!”

One of the gendarmes walking alongside of her offers his arm, and supported by it Marie Antoinette totters up the three stone steps which lead into the prison.

At last, at four o’clock in the morning, on the 15th of August, the jury have given their verdict.  It runs:  “Death!—­execution by the guillotine!”

Marie Antoinette has heard the verdict with unmoved composure, whilst the noise from the excited crowd in the galleries is suddenly hushed as by a magic spell, and even the faces of the infuriated fish women turn pale!

Marie Antoinette alone has remained calm; grave and cool she rises from her seat and herself opens the balustrade to leave the hall and return to her prison.