suffered her seventy-five days' agony--from August 2 till October 15, when
she was condemned--was turned into a chapel of expiation in 1816. The lamp
still exists which lighted the august prisoner and enabled her guards to
watch her through the night. The door still exists, tho changed in
position, which was cut transversely in half and the upper part fixt that
the queen might be forced to bend in going out, because she had said that
whatever indignities they might inflict upon her they could never force
her to bend the head.

After her condemnation, Marie Antoinette was not brought back to this
chamber. It was a far more miserable cell which saw her write her last
touching farewell to Madame Elizabeth. But this was the room in which the
Girondins spent their last night, when, as Riouffe, himself in the prison
at the time, says, "all during this frightful night their songs sounded
and if they stopt singing it was but to talk about their country." The
adjoining cell, now used as a sacristy, was the prison of Robespierre.




Pere la Chaise

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


[Footnote: From "Outre Mer." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.]



The cemetery of Pere la Chaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are