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While he was waiting, literally, for the ax to fall, it is touching to note that Louis studied the only notable precedent available as a guide to his conduct—a history of England giving an account of the death of Charles I. Charles, as the Commonwealth Poet Andrew Marvell conceded. "Nothing common did or mean. Upon that memorable Scene." Louis was as good as his royal Stuart exemplar and became one man, at least, who was a hero to his valet. Cléry. the valet, though too upset to shave the King, honored the courage and courtesy of his last hours, was at pains to order boiled beef and mashed parsnips. The King was fond of that dish, and besides, could eat it with a spoon. The revolutionary citizenry would not trust him with a knife, for fear of suicide. "Do they think me a coward?" the King asked with indignation.
The journalist Prudhomme was less generous than the English poet or the French valet when he came to record the decapitation of Marie Antoinette. With her hair cut short and wearing widow's weeds, the Queen trod on the foot of her executioner as she mounted the scaffold and said prettily, "Monsieur. I beg your pardon." Sneered Eyewitness Prudhomme: "It may be that she contrived this little scene to add an interest to her memory, for there are some people whose vanity persists as long as life itself."
Added Humiliation. No doubt the Revolutionary Tribunal could only do what it did. The citizens had not learned the English trick with difficult monarchs of cutting off their pocket money rather than their heads. The modern reader (for whom kings are no problem) may yet be shocked and puzzled, not at the executions but at the scenes made vivid in the keyhole cameos of chambermaids, doctors, etc. Why humiliate the doomed? After a half-hour debate about a pair of scissors that the King had asked for, the representatives of the people decided on no scissors. As for the Queen, she had to conduct all the arts of female sanitation and toilette under the eyes of a citizen jailer. It seems shocking—just as the act of the executioner of slapping the cheeks of Charlotte Corday's severed head is more shocking than her death. Why?
In humiliating Louis and Marie Antoinette, the revolutionary citizens were not being cruel and vindictive for the fun of it but were acting from fear of their own awe of the monarchy. Royal ritual and ceremony—a sort of status symbolism run mad—still held its power over the minds of the republicans; instinctively, they knew that the King and Queen must be deglorified before they could be decapitated. So, too, the Dauphin was left to squat for months in his own ordure.
This puzzling ambivalence becomes clear in the scenes about the guillotine as Louis' head fell into the basket. Dr. Philippe Pinel, an enlightened physician, attended as a citizen armed guard and reported his "heart filled with grief." The people were in a mood of "somber consternation." Some dipped handkerchiefs and bits of paper in the royal blood and, says Pinel, went home to "weep in the bosom of their families." Only the mounted guard cried "Vive la Nation!"