On the morning of the 21st January, 1793, Louis XVI. was carried to the scaffold, and suffered death.  On the previous day, at a final interview which was allowed, he had taken the dauphin, “his dear little Norman,” on his knee, and had said to him, “My son, you have heard what I have just said”—­he had been causing them all to promise never to think of avenging his death—­“but, as oaths are something more sacred still than words, swear, with your hands held up to Heaven, that you will obey your father’s dying injunction;” and, adds his sister, who tells the story, “My brother, bursting into tears, obeyed; and this most affecting goodness doubled our own grief.”  And thus father and son parted, but not for long.

On the 1st of July the Committee of Public Safety passed a decree, “That the son of Capet be separated from his mother, and committed to the charge of a tutor, to be chosen by the Council General of the Commune.”  The Convention sanctioned it, and it was carried into effect two days later.  About ten o’clock at night, when the young dauphin was sleeping soundly in his bed, and the ex-queen and her sister were busy mending clothes, while the princess read to them, six municipal guards marched into the room and tore the child from his agonized mother.  They conveyed him to that part of the Tower which had formerly been occupied by his father, where the “tutor” of the commune was in waiting to receive him.  This was no other than a fellow called Simon, a shoemaker, who had never lost an opportunity of publicly insulting the king, and who, through the influence of Marat and Robespierre, had been appointed the instructor of his son at a salary of 500 francs a month, on condition that he was never to leave his prisoner or quit the Tower, on any pretence whatever.

On the first night, Simon found his new pupil disposed to be unmanageable.  The dauphin sat silently on the floor in a corner, and not all his new master’s threats could induce him to answer the questions which were put to him.  Madame Simon, although a terrible virago, was likewise unsuccessful; and for two days the prince mourned for his mother, and refused to taste food, only demanding to see the law which separated him from her and kept them in prison.  At the end of the second day he found that he could not persist in exercising his own will, and went to bed.  In the morning his new master cried in his elation, “Ha, ha! little Capet, I shall have to teach you to sing the ‘Carmagole,’ and to cry ‘Vive la Republique!’ Ah! you are dumb, are you?” and so from hour to hour he sneered at the miserable child.