The priest read the mass; Clery responded as sacristan; and even while the king was receiving the elements, the sound of the drums and trumpets was heard without, which awakened Paris that morning and told the city that the King of France was being led to his execution. Cannon were rattling through the streets, and National Guardsmen were hurrying on foot and on horse along the whole of the way that led from the Temple to the Place de la Concorde. A rank of men, four deep and standing close to one another, armed with pikes and other weapons, guarded both sides of the street, and made it impossible for those who wanted to liberate the king during the ride, to come near to him. The authorities knew that one of the bravest and most determined partisans of the king had arrived in Paris, and that he, in conjunction with a number of young and brave-spirited men, had resolved on rescuing the king at any cost, during his ride to the place of execution. The utmost precautions had been taken to render this impossible. Through the dense ranks of the National Guard, which to-day was composed of mere sans-culottes, the raging, bloodthirsty men of the suburbs drove the carriage in which was the king, followed and escorted by National Guardsmen on horseback. The windows were all closed and the curtains drawn in the houses by which the procession passed; but behind those curtained windows it is probable that people were upon their knees praying for the unhappy man who was now on his way to the scaffold, and who was once King of France.
All at once there arose a movement in this dreadful hedge of armed men, through which the carriage was passing. Two young men cried:
"To us, Frenchmen--to us, all who want to save the king!"
But the cry found no response. Every one looked horrified at his neighbor, and believed he saw in him a spy or a murderer; fear benumbed all their souls, and the silence of death reigned around.
The two young men wanted to flee, to escape into a house close by.
But the door was closed, and before the very door they were cut down and hewn in pieces by the exasperated sans-culottes.
The carriage of the king rolled on, and Louis paid no more attention to objects around him; in the prayer-book which he carried in his hands he read the petitions for the dying, and the abbe prayed with him.
The coachman halted at the foot of the scaffold, and the king dismounted. A forest of pikes surrounded the spot. The drummers beat loudly, but the king cried with a loud voice, "Silence!" and the noise ceased. On that, Santerre sprang forward and commanded them to commence beating their drums again, and they obeyed him. The king took off his upper garments, and the executioners approached to cut off his hair. He quietly let this be done, but when they wanted to tie his hands, his eyes flashed with anger, and with a firm voice he refused to allow them to do so.
"Sire," said the priest, "I see in this new insult only a fresh point of resemblance between your majesty and our Saviour, who will be your recompense and your strength."
Louis raised his eyes to heaven with an indescribable expression of grief and resignation. "Truly," he said, "only my recollection of Him and His example can enable me to endure this new degradation."
He gave his hands to the executioner, to let them be bound. Then resting on the arm of the abbe, he ascended the steps of the scaffold. The twenty drummers, who stood around the staging, beat their drums; but the king, advancing to the very verge of the scaffold, commanded them with a loud voice to be silent, and the noise ceased.
In a tone which was audible across the whole square, and which made every word intelligible, the king said: "I die innocent of all the charges which are brought against me. I forgive those who have caused my death, and I pray God that the blood which you spill this day may never come back upon the head of France. And you, unhappy people--"
"Do not let him go on talking this way," cried Santerre's commanding voice, interrupting the king, then turning to Louis he said, in an angry tone, "I brought you here not to make speeches, but to die!"
The drums beat, the executioners seized the king and bent him down.
The priest stooped over him and murmured some words which only God heard, but which a tradition full of admiration and sympathy has transposed into the immortal and popular formula which is truer than truth and more historical than history: "Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven!"
The drums beat, a glistening object passed through the air, a stroke was heard, and blood spirted up. The King of France was dead, and Samson the executioner lifted up the head, which had once borne a crown, to show it to the people.
A dreadful silence followed for an instant; then the populace broke in masses through the rows of soldiers, and rushed to the scaffold, in order to bear away some remembrances of this ever-memorable event. The clothes of the king were torn to rags and distributed, and they even gave the executioner some gold in exchange for locks of hair from the bleeding head. An Englishman gave a child fifteen louis d'or for dipping his handkerchief in the blood which flowed from the scaffold. Another paid thirty louis d'or for the peruke of the king. [Footnote: These details I take from the "Vossische Zeitung," which, in its issue of the 5th of February, 1798, contains a full report of the execution of King Louis XVI., and also announces that the court of Prussia will testify its grief at the unmerited fate by wearing mourning for a period of four weeks. The author of this work possesses a copy of the " Vossische Zeitung " of that date, in small quarto form, printed on thick, gray paper. In the same number of the journal is a fable by Hermann Pfeffel, which runs in the following strain:
First moral, then political freedom.
A fable, by Hermann Pfeffel. Zeus and the Tigers.
To Zeus there came one day A deputation of tigers. "Mighty potentate,"
Thus spoke their Cicero before the monarch's throne, "The noble nation of tigers, Has long been wearied with the lion's choice as king.
Does not Nature give us an equal claim with his?
Therefore, O Zeus, declare my race To be a people of free citizens!"
"No," said the god of gods, "it cannot be;
You are deceivers, thieves, and murderers, Only a good people merits being free."
[Footnote: "Marie Antoinette et sa Famine," par Lescure, p. 648.]
On the evening of the same day, the executioner Samson, shocked at the terrible deed which he had done, went to a priest, paid for masses to be said for the repose of the king, then laid down his office, retired into solitude, and died in six months. His son was his successor in his ghostly office, and, in a pious manner, he continued what his father began. The masses for the king, instituted by the two Samsons, continued to be read till the year 1840.
On the morrow which followed this dreadful day, the "Widow Capet" requested the authorities to provide for herself and her family a suite of mourning of the simplest kind.
The republic was magnanimous enough to comply with this request.
