like Fersen could do very little; but he seems to have endeavored,
night and day, to serve the woman whom he loved. His efforts have
been described by Grandat; but they were of no avail. The king and
queen were practically made prisoners. Their eldest son died. They
went through horrors that were stimulated by the wretch Hebert, at
the head of his so-called Madmen (Enrages). The king was executed
in January, 1792. The queen dragged out a brief existence in a
prison where she was for ever under the eyes of human brutes, who
guarded her and watched her and jeered at her at times when even
men would be sensitive. Then, at last, she mounted the scaffold,
and her head, with its shining hair, fell into the bloody basket.

Marie Antoinette shows many contradictions in her character. As a
young girl she was petulant and silly and almost unseemly in her
actions. As a queen, with waning power, she took on a dignity
which recalled the dignity of her imperial mother. At first a
flirt, she fell deeply in love when she met a man who was worthy
of that love. She lived for most part like a mere cocotte. She
died every inch a queen.

One finds a curious resemblance between the fate of Marie
Antoinette and that of her gallant lover, who outlived her for
nearly twenty years. She died amid the shrieks and execrations of
a maddened populace in Paris; he was practically torn in pieces by
a mob in the streets of Stockholm. The day of his death was the
anniversary of the flight to Varennes. To the last moment of his
existence he remained faithful to the memory of the royal woman
who had given herself so utterly to him.