The Temple was a dismal fortress which stood in the heart of Paris, a gloomy memorial of past ages of violence and crime. It was situated not far from the Bastile, and inclosed within its dilapidated yet massive walls a vast space of silence and desolation. In former ages cowled monks had moved with noiseless tread through its spacious corridors, and their matins and vespers had vibrated along the stone arches of this melancholy pile. But now weeds choked its court-yard, and no sounds were heard in its deserted apartments but the shrieking of the wind as it rushed through the grated windows and whistled around the angles of the towers. The shades of night were adding to the gloom of this wretched abode as the captives were led into its deserted and unfurnished cells. It was after midnight before the rooms for their imprisonment were assigned to them. It was a night of Egyptian darkness. Soldiers with drawn swords guarded them, as, by the light of a lantern, they picked their way through the rank weeds of the castle garden, and over piles of rubbish, to a stone tower, some thirty feet square and sixty feet high, to whose damp, cheerless, and dismal apartments they were consigned. "Where are you conducting us?" inquired a faithful servant who had followed the fortunes of his royal master. The officer replied, "Thy master has been used to gilded roofs, but now he will see how the assassins of the people are lodged." [Illustration: THE TOWER OF THE TEMPLE.] Madame Elizabeth was placed in a kind of kitchen, or wash-room, with a truckle bed in it, on the ground floor. The second floor of the Tower was assigned to the attendants of the household. One common wooden bedstead and a few old chairs were the only furniture of the room. The third floor was assigned to the king, and queen, and the two children. A footman had formerly slept in the room, and had left suspended upon the walls some coarse and vulgar prints. The king, immediately glancing at them, took them down and turned their faces to the wall, exclaiming, "I would not have my daughter see such things." The king and the children soon fell soundly asleep; but no repose came to the agitated mind of Maria Antoinette. Her lofty and unbending spirit felt these indignities and atrocities too keenly. She spent the night in silent tears, and indulging in the most gloomy forebodings of the fate which yet awaited them.