The note, written finely in even lines, asks for a delay of three days “to permit me to appear before the presence of God.” It asks further for the right to have his own confessor and for the guaranteeing of that confessor (the Abbé Edgeworth, of course) from all anxiety. He asks to see his family, and he recommends to the goodwill of the nation all those who were attached to his person. Here and there he changes a word, scratching out the original expression deliberately, rewriting the substituted expression in a hand as firm as the rest. It is curious to note that he twice expunges the term “the National Convention.” He was making his address to the Convention, and yet he would not use its title. The night came early upon that Sunday, for the unbroken, drizzling sky still stretched above Paris, and there was no sunset. Moreover, the insufficient windows of the mediæval tower, sunk in their thick walls, were partly boarded to prevent communication with friends outside. After some [Illustration: Copyright, by Manzi-Joyant Co. THE LAST VICTIMS OF THE TERROR _To face p. 209_ ] hours had passed,--rather more than two hours in the light of the candles (it was now eight in the evening),--the time for the supreme ordeal was come; his family were to be admitted. For some weeks now he had been separated from them. They had been imprisoned in the rooms above. His demand for three days had been rejected. He was to die upon the morrow, but he was to be permitted to see his own before he died, and to discuss with his confessor what he nobly called “the great business” of our passage from this life. There gave upon the stair facing the narrow stone staircase of the Temple a great oaken door, studded with many huge old nails. It opened, and the queen came in. God! what must we not imagine her to have seemed in that moment, this woman who had so despised him, and yet had been faithful to him, and had principally ruined him; and who had, in these last months, so marvellously changed and grown in soul. The queen came in falteringly. She held by the hand her rickety little son; her somewhat dull little daughter (the elder of the two children) followed. The king’s sister, the Princess Elizabeth, of a different and more simple bearing, and of a soul longer tried and longer purified, came in more erect, the last of the four. The king sat down and put his wife upon his left, his sister upon his right. He took the boy, the last heir of the Capetian monarchy, and stood him between his knees, and told him in a clear manner and in a low and even tone the duties of a Christian in the difficult matter of revenge, that it must be foregone. He lifted up the boy’s little right hand to give to this direction the sanctity of an oath.