THE WINDHAM PAPERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—It is a truism that "the heart of a gentleman" beats to the same tunes in all races, but the following example of the fact may be worthy of special note :— (1) Edmund Malone, writing to Windham on October 30th, 1793, says of Queen Marie Antoinette's last hours, ". . . She had not near her one mortal that she could trust; not a servant of her own choice; not a single bosom on which she could drop a tear, or from which she could receive the smallest consolation ; not one whom she could charge with a lock of her hair . . . for that faithful sister-in-law. . . ."
(2) Now Count Axel Fersen, the Queen's chivalrous friend, had written in his private memoranda, on October 21st (translation of B. P. Wormeley), ". . . It is awful . . . to think that she was alone in her last moments, without consolation, without a person to whom she could speak, to whom she could give her last wishes."
Neither Malone nor Fersen, of course, knew snore than the approximate truth about the morning of the sixteenth of October then.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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