A few days before her trial, an order, possessed by something of mercy, arrived, by force of which she was relieved from the continuous stare of the guard set to watch her. By this relief, she was enabled to kneel, from which act she had been warned throughout her confinement. On October 13th, Fouquier-Tinville notified to Marie Antoinette the fact of her having been indicted for high treason. She listened to the reading of the indictment as though to a death-warrant—the shape, in fact, it really took. As a matter of form, she chose two counsel for her defence—men who had secretly sought the appointment, and who, afterwards, of course, paid for their pity with their lives. On the 14th, at noon, she made as elegant a toilette as she could—hid the rags and the patchiness of her white hair as much as possible, and went up the stone stairs of her dungeon to the judgment-hall above her prison. The passages were full of people, who reviled her as she passed along. She bore her head well up, but she could not change the fallen mouth, the pinched nose, tarnished eyes, and shrunken, weakened body. But the black circles round those eyes artificially increased their failing brilliancy, and they fired glances of scorn and fearlessness at her gibing enemies. She had never possessed the humble, religious feeling and sweet patience which distinguished Louis. A perfectly pure woman, at heart, she was somewhat of a Voltairean; she despised death, and feared no power. We are as we are made; so, in her final trial, she met the scowls of the people, chiefly of women, face to face. Some authorities say that one girl uttered a cry of pity as the Queen passed—she was strangled. These unsexed wretches had undertaken to accompany the Queen to the scaffold with every possible indignity. And she stands before her—judges. “What is your name?” “I am called Marie Antoinette, of Lorraine, in Austria,” she replies, in a low, musical voice. “Your condition?” “Widow of Louis, formerly King of the French.” “Your age?” “Thirty-seven.” Louquier-Tinville now read the indictment. It was the summing up of all her declared crimes of high birth, condition, and rank. She was quite guilty of all these things. The chief accusations were merely echoes of all that had been whispered of her in the foulest places. She was accused of prodigality, licentiousness, and treason to France. She showed no sign of emotion, beyond an unheeded movement of the fingers over the bar of a chair, as though they were recalling some half-forgotten music.