The cabinet of the king, a very beautiful room, is near. Here is a large round table in the centre of the saloon. History informs us that one day Louis XV. was sitting at this table, with a packet of letters before him. The petted favorite, Madame du Barri, came in, and suspecting that the package was from a rival, she snatched it from the king's hand. He rose indignantly, and pursued her. She ran around the table, chased by the angry monarch, till finding herself in danger of being caught, she threw the letters into the glowing fire of the grate. The fascinating and guilty beauty perished in the Revolution. She was condemned by the revolutionary tribunal. Her long hair was shorn, that the knife of the guillotine might more keenly cut its way. But clustering ringlets, in beautiful profusion, fell over her brow and temples, and vailing her voluptuous features reposed upon her bosom, from which the executioner had brutally torn the dress. The yells of the maddened populace, deriding her exposure and her agony of terror, filled the air. The drunken mob danced exultingly around the aristocratic courtesan as the cart dragged her to the block. But the shrieks of the appalled victim pierced through the uproar which surrounded her. "Life--life--life!" she screamed, frantic with fright; "O, save me, save me!" The mob laughed and shouted, and taunted her with coarse witticisms upon the soft pillow of the guillotine, upon which her head would soon repose. The coarse executioners, with rude violence, bound her graceful, struggling limbs to the plank, the slide fell, and her shrieks were hushed in death.
And here is the room in which her royal lover died. It was midnight, the 10th of May, 1774. The small-pox, in its most loathsome form, had swollen his frame into the mockery of humanity. The courtiers had fled in consternation from the monarch whom they hated and despised. In his gorgeous palace the king of thirty millions of people was left, to struggle with death, unpitied and alone. An old woman sat unconcerned in an adjoining room, waiting till he should be dead. Occasionally she rose and walked to his bedside to see if he still breathed, and, disappointed that he lived so long, returned again to her chair. A lamp flickers at the window, a signal to the courtiers, at a safe distance, that the king is not yet dead. They watch impatiently through the hours of the night the glimmer of that dim torch. Suddenly it is extinguished, and gladness fills all hearts.