The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 372, February 12, 1887 — John Shaqi
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 372, February 12, 1887Various
General
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 372, February 12, 1887
Various
Children's literature -- Periodicals
“The Queen had scarcely strength sufficient left to undress my brother
and put him to bed. She herself lay down in her clothes, and all night
long we could hear her shivering with cold and anguish.” The King had
promised to see them again in the morning, but he deemed it better not
to expose them to the further ordeal. The beat of the drums and the
shouts of the people told them that all was over.
“Nothing succeeded in calming the anguish of my mother,” writes Madame
Royale; “life or death had become indifferent to her. She sometimes
gazed at us with a piteously forlorn air that made us shudder. Happily
my own illness was increased by sorrow, and this gave my poor mother
some occupation.”
Marie Antoinette was unwilling to walk in the garden of the Temple
after her husband’s death, for in so doing she was obliged to pass the
door of the room where he had been confined. Afraid, however, that
the want of air would tell on her children’s health, she obtained
leave to walk with them on the top of the Tower. The platform was,
however, surrounded with lattice work, and the air-holes were carefully
stopped. The Queen asked to have a door opened between her room and
that of Madame Elizabeth, but this request, after being referred to the
Council General, was refused. At all hours—sometimes in the dead of
night—their rooms were invaded by the municipals, or by commissaries of
the convention, often intoxicated, who rudely searched every corner,
and took away whatever little trifles they could find. “They searched
even beneath our mattresses,” says Madame Royale, on one occasion; “my
poor brother was sleeping. They tore him roughly from his bed that they
might search it, and my mother held him in her arms, quite benumbed
with cold.”
In the beginning of July the Convention ordered that the Dauphin should
be separated from his mother, and committed to the guardianship of
Simon, the shoemaker, in another part of the Tower. A terrible scene
ensued when this decree was communicated to the hapless prisoners.
The poor boy—he was only eight years old—threw himself with cries of
terror into his mother’s arms for protection, and Marie Antoinette
for more than an hour defended the bed on which she laid him against
the municipal officers, protesting that they should kill her before
they should take away her child. “At length they grew enraged, and
threatened so positively to kill both him and me, that her love for us
once more compelled her to yield. My aunt and I took my brother out of
bed, as my mother herself had no strength left; and, as soon as he was
dressed, she took him in her arms, and, after bathing him in her tears,
which were the more bitter as she foresaw that it was the last time
she should ever see him, she placed him herself in the hands of the
municipal officers.”
The mother’s cup of sorrows was nearly full. Madame Royale thus
pictures the days that followed:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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