Marie Antoinette<\/a> dressed simply in white, and fastened black mourning ribbons to her wrists. Since the execution of her husband, Louis\u00a0XVI, some nine months earlier, her fate had probably been inevitable. So when, at 10 that morning, the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal entered her cell to pronounce the sentence of death, she was not at all surprised. \u201cThis is quite useless,\u201d she said simply. \u201cI know the sentence only too well.\u201d<\/p>\nTo those who observed her final hours, Marie Antoinette seemed almost unnaturally composed. When, a little later, the executioner Henri Sanson began to cut her hair, she gave a start as the blade touched her neck, but generally she remained astonishingly calm. Even as the cart rattled towards the guillotine, wrote one Victorian historian, she maintained \u201ca grave, resolute look, gazing straight before her, pale, with red, even blood-shot eyes, but carrying her head high\u201d. As she passed, crowds shouted \u201cAustrian bitch!\u201d but she never so much as flinched.<\/p>\n