Louis XVII. The Committee allowed five days to pass before appointing a successor to Dessault; and the feelings of the rulers might be gathered from the fact, that even now no one was allowed to visit the poor sick child from eight o'clock in the evening till 9 in the morning, and that he was left entirely alone throughout the night in his sufferings and sorrows. The new physician, Dr. Pelletan, insisted, with lively indignation, that his bed should be removed to a room the windows of which were not nailed up with boards, and which allowed ingress to the sun-light. Louis took all this passively like everything else, felt himself a little refreshed, but said, when Gomin nevertheless observed a tear on his cheek: "I am always alone; my mother, you know, remained in the other Tower." He little knew that she had been resting in her grave for nearly two years; love for his mother was the last spark of his fading consciousness. On the 8th of June all the symtoms of approaching dissolution increased. The Prince lay in his bed without moving; when Gomin asked him whether he was in pain he answered, "yes," but said that the music above was so beautiful, and then suddenly cried in a loud voice: "I hear the voice of my mother; I wonder whether my sister heard the music too." Then followed a long silence and then a joyful cry "I will tell you," and he turned to Lasne who was bending over him to listen. But Lasne heard nothing more, the boy had ceased to breathe and the sacrifice was completed.1 1 Even after the latest discussion of the vexed question concerning the fate of Louis XVII. (in Louis Blanc vol. XII, cap. 2). I see no reason to make any alteration in the above account. We may concede to Louis Blanc, that the descriptions of Lasne and Gomin, 30 years after the oc currences, are not to be relied upon in every particular. But this is all that the materials which he has brought forward can prove. The silence of the Prince, which is (according to the views, not exactly maintained by him, but strongly dwelt upon throughout), a proof of CH. I.] DEATH OF LOUIS XVII. 327 The Comité de Sûreté générale received the news with affected indifference, ordered the fact to be entered in the civil registers, and had the corpse dissected by the physicians who had treated the Prince. The examination proved the same fact which the Princess afterwards recorded in her memoirs: he was not poisoned; the venom with which he was killed was want of cleanliness, ill-treatment, and revolting cruelty. On the 9th, the Committee reported to the Convention on the death of the Dauphin; the Assembly heard it in silence, and immediately passed on to other questions. Yet it made a deep impression on all sides. The Republicans were filled with inward satisfaction, and relieved from pressing anxiety; the Royalists, and with them the great mass of the population, were struck as with a heavy blow. Uncertain and undeveloped as had been the hopes which had attached themselves to the name of the imprisoned child, they had always pointed to the sole way of effecting a compromise between otherwise irreconcileable antagonists. The legitimate King was now Louis XVIII. -the head of the armed emigration; there was now no the substitution of a dumb child in the place of the Dauphin, may be naturally explained by the horrible ill-treatment to which he was subjected. The chief difficulty of this hypothesis, Louis Blanc has altogether overlooked. This consists, not in the question, why the Dauphin was kept concealed after his escape; this question might be met by a reference to the troubles of the times, the discord of the royalists and the character of the Count of Provence. But it seems to me absolutely inexplicable why the Com mittee of Public Safety, which was anxiously desirous of peace, and in great fear of the constitutional agitation, should have hesitated for months-in the face of the Spanish government, which for a long time refused to make peace on account of the imprisonment of the Prince, and in the face of the constitutional party in Paris, which for months endeavoured to restore the monarchy in his favour-to reveal the truth, if they really only kept an unknown and supposititious child in the prison of the Temple. other choice than between the unconditional restoration of the ancien régime, and the continuance of the Republic. Even the most decided among the Moderates and Royalists in Paris no longer hesitated for a moment. In the Commission of Eleven, Lanjuinais and his friends voted at once for the appointment of a Republican Excecutive Council. CH. II.J CHAPTER II. FOREIGN POLICY. 329 THE MODERATE PARTY ARE FOR PEACE, THE REVOLUTIONISTS FOR WAR.- WE observe a great uncertainty in the position of affairs. All the interests and feelings of a large majority of the population were earnestly directed towards peace, quiet, legal order, and the restoration of a strong and lasting polity, which might guarantee to the country harmony with its neighbours, and to the inhabitants security for labour and property. But the tremendous convulsions of the last few years had thrown every thing into confusion, and had attached some through their ambition, and others through the hope of gain, to the continuance of a revolutionary state of things. The task of rearing a sound polity on the ruins of the Reign of Terror was in itself infinitely difficult; and how small was the number of disinterested men among the rulers, who looked only to the weal of their country, without a thought of personal aggrandizement! And yet nothing was more certain, than that the future welfare, not only of France, but of all Europe, depended on the question whether right or might, whether law or passion, whether constitution or revolution, carried off the palm in Paris. Domestic and foreign policy were as closely united with one another in 1795 as in 1792: the same necessities which created the Moderate party at home, urgently called for peace abroad; and the same passions which despised the rights of fellow-citizens in France, burst furiously and rapaciously over all the neighbouring frontiers. And, as before, we can clearly trace this connexion in the politico-economical and financial circumstances of the times. The Thermidorians had succeeded no better than Robespierre in re-establishing the finances of the State upon their natural foundations. They could not raise taxes, for the simple reason that there were no organized authorities for collecting them, and that the taxpayers were sunk in poverty. If ever a citizen was found who, from some whim or other, wished to pay his quota, he did so, of course, in assignats, and these had now fallen so low, that the State in reality scarcely received a twentieth part of its demand. At the time of the 1st of Prairial (the end of May 1795) the mass of paper money which had been issued had risen to nearly 13,000 millions, of which 10,000 millions were in circulation; and, in correct proportion to this enormous sum, the exchange had fallen to 7 per cent. As the State had no other means of defraying its expenses than this paper-as it reckoned the assignats at their nominal worth to the officials and stockholders, but only at the current price to the army, the great contractors and the workmen-it is evident, that it must continually use more and more paper money, that the issue of the latter must increase every month, that, consequently, its value must continually fall, and that |