Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Marie Antoinette — Volume 07 by Jeanne Louise Henriette (Genet) Campan
page 58 of 88 (65%)
another room.--[This was the last time the brother and sister met] . . .
Chaumette then questioned me about a thousand shocking things of which
they accused my mother and aunt; I was so indignant at hearing such
horrors that, terrified as I was, I could not help exclaiming that they
were infamous falsehoods.

"But in spite of my tears they still pressed their questions. There were
some things which I did not comprehend, but of which I understood enough
to make me weep with indignation and horror . . . . They then asked me
about Varennes, and other things. I answered as well as I could without
implicating anybody. I had always heard my parents say that it were
better to die than to implicate anybody." When the examination was over
the Princess begged to be allowed to join her mother, but Chaumette said
he could not obtain permission for her to do so. She was then cautioned
to say nothing about her examination to her aunt, who was next to appear
before them. Madame Elisabeth, her niece declares, "replied with still
more contempt to their shocking questions."

The only intimation of the Queen's fate which her daughter and her
sister-in-law were allowed to receive was through hearing her sentence
cried by the newsman. But "we could not persuade ourselves that she was
dead," writes Madame Royale. "A hope, so natural to the unfortunate,
persuaded us that she must have been saved. For eighteen months I
remained in this cruel suspense. We learnt also by the cries of the
newsman the death of the Duc d'Orleans.

[The Duc d'Orleans, the early and interested propagator of the Revolution,
was its next victim. Billaud Varennes said in the Convention: "The time
has come when all the conspirators should be known and struck. I demand
that we no longer pass over in silence a man whom we seem to have
DigitalOcean Referral Badge