History of the Girondists Part 34

At eleven o'clock the people set out for the quartier of the Tuileries.

The number of men who left the Place de la Bastille was estimated at twenty thousand; they were divided into three bodies, the first composed of the battalions of the faubourg, armed with sabres and bayonets, obeyed Santerre; the second, composed of the lowest rabble, without arms or only armed with pikes and sticks, was under the orders of the demagogue Saint-Huruge; the third, a confused ma.s.s of squalid men, women, and children, followed, in a disorderly march, a young and beautiful woman in male attire, a sabre in her hand, a musket on her shoulder, and seated on a cannon drawn by a number of workmen. This was Theroigne de Mericourt.

Santerre was well known: he was the king of the faubourgs. Saint-Huruge had been, since '89, the great agitator of the Palais Royal.

The Marquis de Saint-Huruge, born at Macon of a rich and n.o.ble family, was one of those men of tumult and disturbances who seem to personify the ma.s.ses. Gifted by nature with a towering stature and a martial figure, his voice thundered above the roars of the crowd. He had his agitations, his fury, his moments of repentance, and sometimes even of cowardice; his heart was not cruel, but his brain was disturbed. Too aristocratic to be envious, too rich to be a spoliator, too frivolous to be a fanatic by principle, the Revolution turned his brain in the same manner as a rapidly flowing river carries with it the eye that in vain strives to gaze fixedly on it. His life seemed that of a maniac; he loved the Revolution when in motion because it was akin to madness. When yet very young he had sullied his name, ruined his fortune, and forfeited his honours by debauchery, women, and gaming. At the Palais Royal and the neighbouring quartiers, the scene of every disorder, he possessed the infamous celebrity of scandal and shame. All the world had heard of him; his family had procured his incarceration in the Bastille, from which the 14th of July had freed him. He had sworn to be avenged, and he kept his oath; a voluntary and indefatigable accomplice of every faction, he had offered his unpaid services to the Duc d'Orleans, Mirabeau, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, the Girondists, and Robespierre: always an adherent of the party who went the greatest lengths; always a leader of those _emeutes_ that promised the most havoc and ruin. Awake before daybreak, present at every club, he hastened at the slightest noise to swell the crowd; at the smallest tumult to stir men up to more violence. He himself was consumed by the common pa.s.sion, ere he comprehended its nature; and his voice, his gestures, the expression of his features communicated it to others. He vociferated tales of terror; he disseminated the fever; he electrified the wavering ma.s.ses; he urged on the current; he was in himself a sedition.

XI.

After Saint Huruge, marched Theroigne de Mericourt. Theroigne, or Lambertine de Mericourt, who commanded the third corps of the army of the faubourgs, was known among the people by the name of _La Belle Liegoise_. The French Revolution had drawn her to Paris, as the whirlwind attracts things of no weight. She was the impure Joan of Arc of the public streets. Outraged love had plunged her into disorder, and the vice, at which she herself blushed, only made her thirst for vengeance. In destroying the aristocrats she fancied she purified her honour, and washed out her shame in blood.

She was born at the village of Mericourt, near Liege, of a family of wealthy farmers, and had received a finished education. At the age of seventeen her singular loveliness had attracted the attention of a young _seigneur_, whose chateau was close to her residence. Beloved, seduced, and deserted, she had fled from her father's roof and taken refuge in England, from whence, after a residence of some months, she proceeded to France. Introduced to Mirabeau, she knew through him Sieyes, Joseph Chenier, Danton, Ronsin, Brissot, and Camille Desmoulins. Romme, a mystical republican, infused into her mind the German spirit of illumination. Youth, love, revenge, and the contact with this furnace of a revolution, had turned her head, and she lived in the intoxication of pa.s.sions, ideas, and pleasures. Connected at first with the great innovators of '89, she had pa.s.sed from their arms into those of rich voluptuaries, who purchased her charms dearly. Courtezan of opulence, she became the voluntary prost.i.tute of the people; and like her celebrated prototypes of Egypt or of Rome, she lavished upon liberty the wealth she derived from vice.

On the first a.s.semblage of the people she appeared in the streets, and devoted her beauty to serve as an ensign to the people. Dressed in a riding habit of the colour of blood, a plume of feathers in her hat, a sabre at her side, and two pistols in her belt, she hastened to join every insurrection. She was the first of those who burst open the gates of the Invalides and took the cannon from thence. She was also one of the first to attack the Bastille; and a sabre d'homme was voted her on the breach by the victors. On the days of October, she had led the women of Paris to Versailles, on horseback, by the side of the ferocious Jourdan, called "_the man with the long beard_." She had brought back the king to Paris: she had followed, without emotion, the heads of the gardes du corps, stuck on pikes as trophies. Her language, although marked by a foreign accent, had yet the eloquence of tumult. She elevated her voice amidst the stormy meetings of the clubs, and from the galleries blamed their conduct. Sometimes she spoke at the Cordeliers.

Camille Desmoulins mentions the enthusiasm which her harangues created.

"Her similes," says he, "were drawn from the Bible and Pindar,--it was the eloquence of a Judith." She proposed to build the palace of the representative body on the site of the Bastille. "To found and embellish this edifice," said she, "let us strip ourselves of our ornaments, our gold, our jewels. I will be the first to set the example." And with these words she tore off her ornaments in the tribune. Her ascendency during the _emeutes_ was so great, that with a single sign she condemned or acquitted a victim; and the royalists trembled to meet her.

During this period, by one of those chances that appear like the premeditated vengeances of destiny, she recognised in Paris the young Belgian gentleman who had seduced and abandoned her. Her look told him how great was his danger, and he sought to avert it by imploring her pardon. "My pardon," said she; "at what price can you purchase it? My innocence gone--my family lost to me--my brothers and sisters pursued in their own country by the jeers and sarcasms of their kindred; the malediction of my father--my exile from my native land--my enrolment amongst the infamous caste of courtezans; the blood with which my days have been and will be stained; that imperishable curse attached to my name, instead of that immortality of virtue which you have taught me to doubt. It is for this that you would purchase my forgiveness. Do you know any price on earth capable of purchasing it?" The young man made no reply. Theroigne had not the generosity to forgive him, and he perished in the ma.s.sacres of September. In proportion as the Revolution became more b.l.o.o.d.y, she plunged deeper into it. She could no longer exist, without the feverish excitement of public emotion. However, her early leaning to the Girondist party again displayed itself, and she also wished to stay the progress of the Revolution. But there were women whose power was superior even to her own. These women, called the _furies_ of the guillotine, stripped the belle Liegoise of her attire, and publicly flogged her on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the 31st of May. This punishment, more terrible than death, turned her brain, and she was conveyed to a mad-house, where she lived twenty years, which were but one long paroxysm of fury. Shameless and blood-thirsty in her delirium, she refused to wear any garments, as a souvenir of the outrage she had undergone. She dragged herself, only covered by her long white hair, along the flags of her cell, or clung with her wasted hands to the bars of the window, from whence she addressed an imaginary people, and demanded the blood of Suleau.

XII.

After Theroigne de Mericourt came other demagogues, less widely known, but already celebrated in their own quartiers, such as Rossignol, the working goldsmith; Brierre, a wine-seller; Gonor, the conqueror of the Bastille; Jourdan, surnamed _Coupe-tete_; the famous Polish Jacobin, Lozouski, afterwards buried by the people at the Carrousel; and Henriot, afterwards the confidential general of the convention. As the columns penetrated into Paris, they were swelled by new groups, that poured forth from the crowded streets that open on the boulevards and the quays. At each influx of these new recruits, a shout of joy burst from the columns, the military bands struck up the air of the _ca Ira_, the Ma.r.s.eillaise of a.s.sa.s.sins, whilst the insurgents sang the chorus, and brandished their arms threateningly at the windows of those suspected of being aristocrates.

These weapons did not resemble the arms of regular troops, which excite at once terror and admiration; they were strange and uncouth arms, caught up by the people in the first impulse of fury or defence.[24]

Pikes, lances, spits, cutla.s.ses, carpenters' axes, masons' hammers, shoemakers' knives, paviours' levers, saws, wedges, mattocks, crow-bars, the commonest household utensils of the poor, and the rusty iron exposed for sale on the quays, were alike seized upon by the people; and these different weapons, rusted, black, hideous, each of which presented a different manner of inflicting a wound, seemed to increase the horror of death by displaying it in a thousand terrible and unwonted forms. The mixture of all s.e.xes, ages, and conditions; the confusion of costumes and rags beside uniforms, old men beside young; even children, some carried in their mothers' arms, others holding their father's hand or his garments; common prost.i.tutes, their silken dresses soiled and torn, indecency on their brow, and insult on their lips, hundreds of women of the lowest description, and from the dregs of the people, recruited to swell the cortege, and excite commiseration from the garrets of the faubourgs, clothed in tattered finery, pale, emaciated, their eyes hollow, and their cheeks sunken from misery, the personifications of want, in fact the people, in all the disorder, the confusion, the exposure of a city suddenly summoned from its houses, its workshops, its garrets, its scenes and haunts of debauch and infamy; such was the aspect of intimidation which the conspirators wished to give to this scene.

Here and there flags waved above the heads of the mult.i.tude. On one was written _Sanction or death_; on another, _The recall of the patriot ministers_; on the third, _Tremble tyrant, thine hour is come_. A man, his arms bared to the shoulders, bore a gibbet, from which hung the effigy of a crowned female, with the inscription, _Beware the lantern_.

Farther on a group of hags raised a _guillotine_, with a card bearing the words, _National Justice on tyrants; death for Veto and his wife_.

Amidst all this apparent disorder, a secret system of order was visible.

Men in rags, yet whose white hands and s.h.i.+rts of the finest linen pointed them out as of superior rank, wore hats, on which signs of recognition were drawn with white chalk; the crowd regulated their march by them, and followed wherever they went.

The princ.i.p.al body thus marched by the Rue Saint Antoine, and the dark and central avenues of Paris, to the Rue Saint Honore, the population of these quartiers swelling its numbers at each instant. The more this living torrent increased the more furious it became. Now a band of butchers joined it, each bearing a pike, on which was stuck the bleeding heart of a calf, with the words, _Coeur d'aristocrate_. Next came a band of Chiffoniers dressed in rags, and displaying a lance, from which floated a tattered garment, with the inscription, _Tremble tyrants, here are the sans culottes_. The insult which the aristocracy had cast at poverty, now, when adopted by the people, became the weapon of the nation against the rich.

This army defiled during three hours along the Rue Saint Honore.

Sometimes a terrible silence, only broken by the sound of thousands of feet on the pavement, oppressed the imagination, as the sign of concentrated rage of this mult.i.tude; then solitary voices, insulting speeches, and atrocious sarcasms, were mingled with the laughter of the crowd; then sudden and confused murmurs burst from this human sea, and rising to the roofs of the houses, left only the last syllables of their prolonged acclamations audible: _Long live the nation! Long live the sans culottes! Down with the veto!_ This tumult reached the salle du Manege, where the Legislative a.s.sembly was then sitting. The head of the cortege stopped at the doors, the columns inundated the court of the Feuillants, the court of the Manege, and all the openings of the salle.

These courts, these avenues, these pa.s.sages, which then masked the terrace of the garden, occupied the s.p.a.ce which now extends between the garden of the Tuileries and the Rue Saint Honore--that central artery of Paris. It was mid-day.

XIII.

Roederer, the procureur syndic of the directory of the department, a post which in '92 corresponded with that of prefect de Paris, was at this moment at the bar of the a.s.sembly. Roederer, a partisan of the const.i.tution, of the school of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, was a courageous enemy of anarchy. He found in the const.i.tution the point of reconciliation between his fidelity to the people and his loyalty to the king; and he sought to defend this const.i.tution with every weapon of the law which sedition had not broken in his grasp. "Armed mobs threaten to violate the const.i.tution, the Chamber of Representatives, and the dwelling of the king," said Roederer at the bar; "the reports of the night are alarming; the minister of the interior calls on us to march troops immediately to defend the chateau. The law forbids armed a.s.semblies, and yet they advance--they demand admittance; but if you yourselves set an example by suffering them to enter, what will become of the force of the law in our hands? your indulgence will destroy all public force in the hands of the magistrates. We demand to be charged with the fulfilment of all our duties: let the responsibility also be ours, and let nothing diminish the obligation we are under of dying to preserve and defend public tranquillity." These words, worthy the chancellor L'Hopital, or Mathieu Mole, were coldly listened to by the a.s.sembly, and saluted by ironical laughter from the tribunes. Vergniaud affected to bow to them, and weakened their effect. "Yes, doubtless,"

said this orator, destined to be torn from the tribune, a year later, by an armed mob,--"Doubtless, we should have done better never to have received armed men, for if to-day patriotism brings good citizens. .h.i.ther, aristocracy may to-morrow bring its janissaries. But the error we have committed authorises that of the people. The a.s.sembly, formed up to the present time, appears sanctioned by the silence of the law. It is true that the magistrates demand force to put them down: but what should you do in such circ.u.mstances? I think that it would be an excess of severity to be inflexible to a fault, the origin of which is in your decrees: it would be an insult to the citizens to imagine they had any evil designs. It is said that this a.s.sembly wishes to present an address at the chateau: I do not believe that the citizens who compose it will demand to be presented with arms in their hands to the king: I think that they will obey the laws, and that they will go unarmed, and like simple pet.i.tioners. I demand that these citizens be instantly permitted, to defile before us." Dumolard and Raymond, indignant at the perfidy or the cowardice of these words, energetically opposed this weakness or complicity of the a.s.sembly. "The best homage to pay the people of Paris," cried Raymond, "is to make them obey their own laws. I demand that before these citizens are introduced they lay down their arms."

"Why," returned Guadet, "do you talk of disobedience to the law, when you have so often disobeyed it yourself? you would commit a revolting injustice; you would resemble that Roman emperor who, in order to find more guilty persons, caused the laws to be written in letters so obscure that no one could read them."

The deputation of the insurgents entered at these last words, amidst the bursts of applause and the indignant murmurs of the a.s.sembly.

XIV.

The orator of the deputation, Huguenin, read the pet.i.tion concerted at Charenton. He declared that the city had risen ready to employ every means of avenging the majesty of the people, whilst he deplored the necessity of staining their hands with the blood of the conspirators.

"But," said he, with apparent resignation, "the hour has come; blood must be shed. The men of the 14th of July are not asleep, they only appeared to be; their awakening is terrible: speak, and we will act. The people is there to judge its enemies: let them choose between Coblentz and ourselves; let them purge the land of their enemies--the tyrants; you know them. The king is not with you: we need no other proof of it than the dismissal of the patriot ministers and the inaction of the armies. Is not the head of the people worth that of kings? Must the blood of patriots flow with impunity to satisfy the pride and ambition of the perfidious chateau of the Tuileries? If the king does not act, suspend him from his functions: one man cannot fetter the will of twenty-five millions of men. If through respect we suffer him to retain the throne, it is on condition that he observe the const.i.tution. If he depart from this he is no longer anything. And the high court of Orleans," continued Huguenin, "what is that doing?--where are the heads of those it should have doomed to death?" These sinister expressions threw the const.i.tutionalists into alarm, and caused the Girondists to smile. The president, however, replied with a firmness which was not sustained by the att.i.tude of his colleagues. It was decided that the people of the faubourgs should be allowed to defile before them under arms.

XV.

Immediately after this decree was voted, the doors, besieged by the mult.i.tude opened, and admitted thirty thousand pet.i.tioners. During this long procession the band played the demagogical airs of the _Carmagnole_ and the _ca Ira_, those _pas de charge_ of revolts. Females, armed with sabres, brandished them at the tribunes, who loudly applauded, and danced before a table of stone, on which were engraved the rights of man, like the Israelites before the Ark. The same flags and the same obscene inscriptions visible in the streets, disgraced the temple of the law. The tattered garments, hanging from their lances, the guillotine, and the _potence_, with the effigy of the queen suspended from it, traversed the a.s.sembly with impunity. Some of the deputies applauded, others turned away their heads or hid their faces in their hands; some more courageous, forced the wretch who bore the _coeur saignant_, partly by entreaties, partly by threats, to retire with his emblem of a.s.sa.s.sination. Part of the people regarded with a respectful eye the salle they profaned; others addressed the representatives as they pa.s.sed, and seemed to exult in their degradation. The rattling of the strange weapons of the crowd, the clatter of their nailed shoes and sabots on the pavement, the shrill shouts of the women, the voices of the children, the cries of _Vive la nation_, patriotic songs, and the sound of instruments, deafened the ear, whilst to the eye, these rags contrasted strangely with the marbles, the statues, and the decorations of the salle. The miasmas of this horde set in motion tainted the air, and stifled respiration. Three hours elapsed ere all the troop had defiled. The president hastened to adjourn the sitting, in the expectation of approaching excesses.

XVI.

But an imposing force was drawn up in the courts of the Tuileries and the garden, to defend the dwelling of the king against the invasion of the people. Three regiments of the line, two squadrons of gendarmes, several battalions of the national guard, and several pieces of cannon, composed the means of resistance; but the troops, undecided, and acted upon by sedition, were but an appearance of force. The cries of _Vive la nation_, the friendly gestures of the insurgents, the appearance of the women extending their arms towards the soldiers through the palisades, and the presence of the munic.i.p.al officers, who displayed a disdainful neutrality towards the king, shook the feeling of resistance amongst the troops, who beheld on either side the uniform of the national guard; and between the population of Paris, in whose sentiments they partic.i.p.ated, and the chateau, which was represented to them as full of treason, they no longer knew which it was their duty to obey. In vain did M.

Roederer, a firm organ of the const.i.tution, and the superior officers of the national guard, such as MM. Acloque and De Romainvilliers, present the text of the law, ordering them to repel force by force. The a.s.sembly set the example of complicity; and the mayor, Petion, by his absence avoided responsibility. The king took refuge in his inviolability; and the troops, abandoned to themselves, could not fail to yield to threats or seduction.

In the interior of the palace, two hundred gentlemen, at the head of whom was the old marshal De Mouchy, had hastened together at the first news of the king's danger. They were rather the voluntary victims of ancient French honour, than useful defenders of the monarchy. Fearing to excite the jealousy of the national guard and the troops, these gentlemen concealed themselves in the remote apartments of the palace, ready rather to die than to combat: they wore no uniform, and their arms were concealed under their coats--hence the name by which they were pointed out to the people of _Chevaliers du poignard_. Arriving secretly from their provinces to offer their services to the king unknown to each other; and only furnished with a card of entrance to the palace, they hastened thither whenever there was danger. They should have been ten thousand, and were but two hundred--the last reserve of fidelity; but they did their duty without counting their number, and avenged the French n.o.bility for the faults and the desertion of the emigration.

XVII.

The mob, on quitting the a.s.sembly, had marched in close columns to the Carrousel. Santerre and Alexandre, at the head of their battalions, directed the movement. A compact ma.s.s of the insurgents, followed by the Rue St. Honore. The other branches of the populace, cut off from the main body, thronged the courts of the Manege and the Feuillants, and tried to make room for themselves by issuing violently by one of the avenues which communicated with the garden from these courts. A battalion of the national guard defended the approach to this iron gate.

The weakness or complaisance of a munic.i.p.al officer freed the pa.s.sage, and the battalion fell back, and took up its ground beneath the windows of the Chateau. The crowd traversed the garden in an oblique direction, and pa.s.sing before the battalions, saluted them with cries of _Vive la nation!_ bidding them take their bayonets from their muskets. The bayonets were removed, and the mob then pa.s.sed out by the entrance of the Port Royal, and fell back upon the gates of the Carrousel, which shut off this place from the Seine. The guards at these wickets again gave way, to allow a certain number of the malcontents to enter, and then shut the doors. These men, excited by their march, songs, the acclamations of the a.s.sembly, and by intoxication, rushed with furious clamours into the court-yards of the Chateau. They ran to the princ.i.p.al doors, pressed upon the soldiers on guard, called their comrades without to come to them, and forced the hinges of the royal entrance gate. The munic.i.p.al officer, Panis, gave orders that it should be opened. The Carrousel was forced, and the mob seemed for a moment to hesitate before the cannon pointed against them, and some squadrons of _gendarmerie_, drawn up in a line of battle. Saint Prix, who commanded the artillery, separated from his guns by a movement of the crowd, sent to the second in command an order to let them fall back in the door of the Chateau. He refused to obey: "_The Carrousel is forced_," he said in a loud voice, "_and so must be the Chateau. Here, artillery men, here is the enemy!_"

And he pointed to the king's windows, turned his guns, and levelled them at the palace. The troops following this desertion of the artillery, remained in line, but took the powder from the pans of their muskets in sight of the people, in sign of fraternity, and allowed a free pa.s.sage to the malcontents.

At this movement of the soldiers, the commandant of the national guard, who witnessed it, called from the court to the grenadiers, whom he saw at the windows of the _Salle des Gardes_, to take their arms, and defend the staircase. The grenadiers, instead of obeying, left the palace by the gallery leading to the garden.

Santerre, Theroigne, and Saint-Huruge hastened by the gate of the palace. The boldest and stoutest of the men in the mob went under the vault which leads from the Carrousel to the garden, dashed the artillerymen on one side, and seizing one of the guns, unlimbered it, and carried it in their arms to the _Salle des Gardes_, on the top of the grand staircase. The crowd, emboldened by this feat of strength and audacity, poured into the apartment and spread like a torrent throughout the staircase and corridors of the Chateau. All the doors were burst in, or fell beneath the shoulders and axes of the mult.i.tude. They shouted loudly for the king; only one door separated them, and this door was already yielding beneath the efforts of levers and blows of pikes from the a.s.sailants.

XVIII.

The king, relying on Petion's promises, and the number of troops with which the palace was surrounded, had seen the a.s.semblage of the mob without uneasiness.

The a.s.sault suddenly made on his abode had surprised him in complete security. Retired with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children to the interior apartments on the side of the garden, he had heard the distant thunder of the crowd without expecting that it was so soon to burst on him. The voices of his frightened servants, flying in all directions, the noise of doors burst open and falling on the floors, the shouts of the people as they approached, threw alarm suddenly amongst the family party, which had met in the king's bed-chamber. The prince, confiding, by his look, his wife, sister, and children to the officers and women of the household who surrounded them, went alone to the _Salle du Conseil_. He there found the faithful Marshal de Mouchy, who did not hesitate to offer the last days of his long life to his master; M.

d'Hervilly, the commandant of the Const.i.tutional Horse Guard, disbanded a few days previously; the governor Acloque, commandant of the battalion of the faubourg St. Marceau, at first a moderate republican, then, overcome by the private virtues of Louis XVI., was his friend, and ready to die for him; three brave grenadiers of the battalion of the faubourg St. Martin, Lecrosnier, Bridau, and Gosse, who alone remained at their post of the interior on the general defection, and ready to protect the king with their bayonets, men of the people, strangers at court, rallied round him by the sole sentiment of duty and affection, only defending the man in the king.

At the moment the king entered this apartment, the doors of the adjacent room, called the _Salle des n.o.bles_, were dashed in by the blows of the a.s.sailants. The king rushed forward to meet the danger. The door-panels fell at his feet, lance heads, iron-shod sticks, spikes were thrust through the opening. Cries of fury, oaths, imprecations accompanied the blows of the axe. The king, in a firm voice, ordered two devoted _valets de chambre_, who accompanied him, Hue, and de Marchais, to open the doors. "What have I to fear in the midst of my people?" said the prince, boldly advancing towards the a.s.sailants.

These words, his advancing step, the serenity of his brow, the respect of so many ages for the sacred person of the king, suspended the impetuosity of the ringleaders, and they appeared to hesitate in crossing the threshold they had burst open. During this doubtful moment, the Marshal de Mouchy, Acloque, the three grenadiers and two servants, made the king retreat a few paces, and then placed themselves between him and the populace. The grenadiers presented their bayonets, and for a moment kept the crowd at bay. But the increasing mob pushed forward the first ranks. The first who pressed in was a man in rags, with naked arms, haggard eyes, and foaming at the mouth. "Where is the _veto_?" he said, thrusting in the direction of the king's breast a long stick with an iron dart at the end. One of the grenadiers pressed down this stick with his bayonet, and thrust aside the arm of this infuriated creature.

The brigand fell at the feet of the citizen, and this act of energy imposed on his companions, and they trampled upon the man as he lay.

Pikes, hatchets, and knives were lowered or withdrawn. The majesty of royalty resumed its empire for a moment, and this mob restrained itself at a certain distance from the king, in an att.i.tude rather of brutal curiosity than of ferocity.

XIX.

Several officers of the National Guard, roused by the report of the king's danger, had hastened to join the brave grenadiers, and made a s.p.a.ce round Louis XVI. The king, who had but one thought, which was to keep the people away from the apartment in which he had left the queen, ordered the door of the _Salle de Conseil_ to be closed behind him. He was followed by the mult.i.tude into the salon of the _OEil de Boeuf_, under pretence that this apartment, from its extent, would allow a greater quant.i.ty of citizens to see and speak with him. He reached the room surrounded by a vast and turbulent crowd, and was happy at finding that only himself was exposed to blows from weapons of all kinds, which thousands of hands brandished over his head; but as he turned his head he saw his sister, Madame Elizabeth, who extended her arms, and was anxious to rush towards him.

She had escaped from the women who retained the queen and children in the bed-chamber. She adored her brother, and wished to die with him.

Young, excessively beautiful, and deeply respected at court, for the piety of her life and her pa.s.sionate devotion to the king, she had renounced all love from her intense affection for her family. Her dishevelled hair, her eyes swimming with tears, her arms extended towards the king, gave to her a despairing and sublime expression. "It is the queen!" exclaimed several women of the faubourgs. This name, at such a moment, was a sentence of death. Some miscreants rushed towards the king's sister with uplifted arms, and were about to strike her, when the officers of the palace undeceived them. The venerated name of Madame Elizabeth made them drop their arms. "Ah! what are you doing?" exclaimed the princess sorrowfully; "let them suppose I am the queen; dying in her place, I might perhaps have saved her." At these words an irresistible movement of the crowd thrust Madame Elizabeth violently from her brother, and drove her into the opening of one of the windows of the _salle_, where the crowd which hemmed her in still contemplated her with respect.