“As I cannot do as I please,” she has written to Madame Elizabeth, in her farewell letter, “so must I endure it if a priest is sent to me; but I now declare that I will tell him not a word, that I will consider him entirely as a stranger to me.”

And Marie Antoinette held her word.  She forbids not the priest Girard to come in, but she answers in the negative when he asks her if she will receive from him the consolations of religion.

She paces her small cell to and fro, to warm herself, for her feet are stiff with cold.  As seven o’clock strikes, the door opens.

It is the executioner of Paris, Samson, who enters.

A slight tremor runs through the queen’s frame.  “You come very early, sir,” murmurs she, “could you not delay somewhat?”

As Samson replies in the negative, Marie Antoinette assumes again a calm, cold attitude.  She drinks without any reluctance the cup of chocolate which has been brought to her from a neighboring cafe.  Proudly, calmly, she allows her hands to be bound with strong ropes behind her back.

At eleven o’clock she finally leaves her room to descend the corridor, and to mount into the wagon which waits for her before the gate of the Conciergerie.

No one guides her on the way; no one bids her a last farewell; no one shows a sympathizing or sad countenance to the departing one.

Alone, between two rows of gendarmes posted on both sides of the corridor, the queen walks forward; behind her is Samson, holding in his hand the end of the rope; the priest and the two assistants of the executioner follow him.

On the path of Death—­such is the suite of the queen, the daughter of an emperor!

Perchance at this hour thousands were on their knees to offer to God their heart-felt prayers for Marie Antoinette, whom in the silence of the soul they still call “the queen;” perchance many thousand compassionate hearts pour out warm tears of sympathy for her who now ascends into the miserable wagon, and sits on a plank which ropes have made firm to both sides of the vehicle.  But those who pray and weep have retired into the solitude of their rooms, for God alone must receive their sighs and see their tears.  The eyes which follow the queen on her last journey must not weep; the words which are shouted at her must betray no compassion.

Paris knows that this is the hour of the queen’s execution, and the Parisian crowd is ready, it is waiting.  In the streets, in the windows of the houses, on the roofs, the people have stationed themselves in enormous masses; they fill the whole Place de la Revolution with their dark, destructive forms.

Now resound the drums of the National Guard posted before the Conciergerie.  The large white horse, which draws the chariot in which Marie Antoinette sits backward, at the side of the priest, is driven onward by the man who swings on its back.  Behind her in the wagon is Samson and his assistants.