Perhaps the enemies of the king and queen have an instinctive
feeling of this, and their hate makes them sympathetic, in order to
teach them to invent new tortures and new sufferings.
Yes, there are unknown pangs still to be felt; their cup of sorrows
was not yet full! The parents are still left to each other, and
their eyes are still allowed to rest upon their children! But the
"one and indivisible republic" means to rend even these bonds which
bind the royal family together, and to part those who have sworn
that nothing shall separate them but death! The republic--which had
abolished the churches, overthrown the altars, driven the priesthood
into exile--the republic cannot grant to the Capet family that only
death shall separate them, for it had even made Death its servant,
and must accept daily victims from him, offered on the Place de
Liberte, in the centre of which stood the guillotine, the only altar
tolerated there.
In the middle of October the republic sent its emissaries to the
Temple, to tear the king from the arms of his wife and his children.
In spite of their pleadings and cries, he was taken to another part
of the Temple--to the great tower, which from this time was to serve
as his lodgings. And in order that the queen might be spared no
pang, the dauphin was compelled to go with his father and be
separated from his mother.
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