2 (October 3). The judges and jurymen of the revolutionary court, like all authorities elected at Paris, were the tools or accomplices of the Commune and of the Committees of Government. The public prosecutor, Fouquier Tinville, acted under the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety. Hitherto the Court had observed the forms of its institution. Witnesses were called on both sides, and the defence was fully heard. Between March and October the Court had sentenced to death sixty-nine persons and acquitted ninety-two. But from this time forms were less and less regarded, while the number of condemnations rose to more than sixty a month. The guillotine stood permanently on the Place de la Révolution. ♦Execution of the Queen.♦ The life of the captive Queen had long been sought for by the Hébertists. Since the fall of the throne she had been shut off from all communication with the outer world. She had seen her husband leave her to die on the scaffold, and her young son had since been torn from her arms, on the pretext that if he were left with her she would bring him up to be a tyrant. Her gaolers, whatever their feelings might be, dared not show her the smallest sign of sympathy. She was informed of the fate that awaited her by her removal from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a prison situated on the island in the Seine, close to the Palais de Justice, where the Revolutionary Court, as well as other Courts of Justice, sat. When brought before the Court she replied with firmness to the accusations made against her, and by her composed and dignified bearing won murmurs of applause from the hostile crowd, which had gathered to witness how the once haughty Queen would endure degradation and ignominy. Like other condemned persons, Marie Antoinette was taken from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, seated in a common cart with her arms tied behind her. History can have little to say in praise of a Queen whose conduct, during her years of prosperity, had done much to cause that general disorganisation of society and government, in the midst of which she perished amongst so many other victims, of whom many had striven for higher objects, and of whom many were more innocent than herself. But by her brave endurance of adversity, and the noble and resigned manner in which she met death, she, like others, atoned for past errors, and won for her memory respect and sympathy (October 16). ♦Execution of the Girondists.♦ Twenty-one deputies of the right soon followed the Queen to the scaffold. Amongst them were nine of those deputies whose arrest had been ordered on June 2, including Vergniaud, Brissot, and Gensonné. Their trial was cut short through fear lest if they were allowed to plead their cause they would gain the sympathy of the eager and excited audience with which the Court was thronged. On their way from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution they sang together the already famous song, the Marseillaise, beginning,--