Louis XVI. listened to the invectives launched against him, and to the decree depriving him of royal power, without a change of color. At the very moment when the vote was taken, he bent towards Deputy Coustard, who sat beside the box of the _Logographe_, and said with the greatest tranquillity: "What you are doing there is not very constitutional." Impassive, and speaking of himself as of a king who had lived a thousand years before, he leaned his elbows on the front of the box, and looked on, like a disinterested spectator, at the lugubrious spectacle that was unrolled before him. Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, was shuddering. So long as the combat lasted, a secret hope had thrilled her. But when she saw them bringing to the Assembly and laying on the table the jewel-cases, trinkets, and portfolios which the insurgents had just {319} taken from her bedroom at the Tuileries; when she heard the victorious cries of the rioters; when Vergniaud's voice sounded in her ears like a funeral knell--she could hardly contain her grief and indignation. For one instant she closed her eyes. But presently she haughtily raised her head. The tide was rising, rising incessantly. Petitioners demanded sometimes the deposition, and sometimes the death, of the King. This dialogue was overheard between the painter David and Merlin de Thionville, who were talking together about Louis XVI.: "Would you believe it? Just now he asked me, as I was passing his box, if I would soon have his portrait finished."--"Bah! and what did you say?"--"That I would never paint the portrait of a tyrant again until I should have his head in my hat."--"Admirable! I don't know a more sublime answer, even in antiquity."