When Manuel, one of the authors of the September massacres, was taken to the Conciergerie and stood before the tribunal, a group of prisoners standing by, regardless of the gendarmes, pushed him against a pillar, still stained with the blood shed on that fearful day, with cries of See the blood you shed, [106] and through applause and bravos he passed to his doom.The party in opposition to the Queen, absolutely unscrupulous and vindictive, hesitated at no calumny or exaggeration that might do her injury; and everything seemed to create fresh enemies for her.
FORE:When the Empress returned from Czarskoiesolo she desired Mme. Le Brun to paint the portraits of the Grand Duchesses Alexandrine and Helena, daughters of the Tsarevitch, then fourteen and thirteen years old, and afterwards that of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, wife of Alexander, eldest grandson of the Empress, the young girl she had [134] seen on her first visit to Czarskoiesolo, by whom she was completely fascinated.
The abolition of lettres de cachet, liberty of the press, the strict administration of justice, the equalisation of taxation, the abolition of the oppressive privileges of the nobles; all these and others of the kind were hailed with acclamations by the generous, enthusiastic young nobles who imagined that they could regenerate and elevate to their lofty ideals the fierce, ignorant, unruly populace who were thirsting, not for reform and good government, but for plunder and bloodshed.Adrienne especially believed implicitly in her husband, who was now the supreme fashion amongst the Liberals, fted, flattered by high and low, and just at this time the idol of the people; a popularity which soon gave place to hatred, and which did no good while it lasted.Rashly they went to Paris in September, 1793, and were soon detained as suspected in their own house, where Father Carrichon, a priest, who in disguise carried on the work of his sacred calling, succeeded in visiting them frequently; and from the news he brought them they were before long [245] convinced that their lives would be sacrificed, and prepared with courage and resignation to meet their death.