It was as the vehicle turned the corner of the Rue St. Honoré into that which is now the Rue Royale that the famous painter, David, who, during the Reign of Terror, was a furious Jacobin and a friend of Robespierre, but who was destined to become a Baron of the Empire, and to paint the Coronation of Napoleon at Notre Dame, was able from the balcony which he occupied in company with the wife of a member of the Convention to make a sketch of Marie Antoinette. The drawing has come down to us. The features of the Martyr Queen are sharp and pinched, exhibiting no traces whatever of former comeliness, and she looks fifty years of age. It may here be mentioned that the illustrious and pure-minded English sculptor, John Flaxman, when he visited Paris, after the Peace of Amiens, resolutely refused to meet the artist who made the last sketch of Marie Antoinette, and always spoke of him disdainfully as “David of the bloodstained brush.” The historians are divided in opinion as to the demeanor of Marie Antoinette on the scaffold. Some say that she laid herself down on the fatal plank with calm deliberation, and met her death with noble fortitude, recalling Andrew Marvell’s superb lines on the execution of Charles I:-- And while the armèd bands Did clap their bloody hands, He nothing common did, nor mean, Upon that memorable scene; Nor called the gods, in vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless might; But, with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try; Then bowed his comely head Down, as upon a bed. Others narrate that the Queen ascended the steps of the scaffold in great haste, and with apparent impatience, and turned her eyes with much emotion towards the Palace of the Tuileries, the scene of her former greatness, and that she made some slight resistance before submitting to the executioner. My own impression is that she was two-thirds dead--that the _rigor mortis_ was upon her before she reached the scaffold; that she was lifted out of the cart and half carried to the guillotine, and that she did not give the headsman and his assistants the slightest trouble. It is, at all events, certain that at half past twelve her head was severed from her body. One of the _valets du bourreau_, or executioner’s men, lifted and showed the head streaming with blood, from the four quarters of the scaffold, the mob meanwhile screeching “_Vive la République!_” and it is asserted that a young man who dipped his handkerchief in the blood, and pressed it with veneration to his heart, was instantly apprehended. The corpse of Marie Antoinette was immediately flung into a pit filled with quicklime, in the graveyard of the Madeleine where the remains of her husband had also been interred.