Madame Berthier, on the box, had adorned her head with a yellow turban, and bore a pole, to which was fastened an orange streamer; this she waved, and at the same time shouted joyously, 'We have him here caged! It was all my doing; I hunted him down with my dogs.'

Banners, rudely extemporised, were fluttered before the carriage, bearing inscriptions such as these:—'He has devoured the poor.' 'He has drunk the blood of the widow and the orphan.' 'He has cheated the king.' 'He has betrayed his country.'

As the broken vehicle passed through the streets, pieces of sour black bread rained in at the top and at the windows, whilst the people howled, 'Take that and eat it, it is what you have given us to eat.'

At the fountain Maubuée the procession was arrested by a tide of people rolled out of La Grève, whither the news had reached that Berthier was entering Paris.

That morning, at nine o'clock, Foulon had been brought to the capital. Some of his servants probably had let the secret escape that he was staying in the château of M. de Sartines, late lieutenant of police, at Viry, near Fontainebleau. Thither, accordingly, some of the electors, followed by a troop of people, had hastened. They found the old man walking in the park. On being arrested, he entreated the electors who seized him to do him the honour of taking a pinch of snuff.

The people, in spite of the remonstrances of his conductors, fell upon him, put a truss of hay on his back, adorned him with a nosegay of nettles, and a collar of thistles. 'You wanted to give us hay,' they said; 'you shall eat some yourself.'

Thus equipped he was led to Paris, and brought before the committee in the Hôtel de Ville.

It was decided that he should be imprisoned in the Abbaye. But La Grève was full of people, and it was questionable whether he could be conducted thither in safety.

If Lafayette had been there, it was thought that the people might have been calmed; but he was absent, and the municipality were in uncertainty what to do. The crowd became more excited, and clamoured for Foulon.

Bailly, gentle, and unfit for such a position, descended to the square to entreat the mob to respect the Hôtel de Ville and the accused; but his voice was scarcely heard, and no attention was paid to his remonstrances.

The crowd forced the few guards before the door from their places, and followed the mayor up the stairs into the great hall, where they bellowed incessantly for Foulon.

After some hesitation, the electors produced him. The old gentleman was perfectly composed. Observing a female in the crowd before him, he detached one of the nettles from his bouquet; and, with a courteous bow, offered it her, saying, 'I am sorry to be unable to offer you a choicer flower, mademoiselle, but pray accept the wish, and overlook the insignificance of the herb; and I will thank you to remind those around you that certain plants cannot be touched with impunity.'

'You are very calm, monsieur,' said one of the guards.

'Sir,' replied Foulon at once, 'crime alone can be disconcerted. Take a pinch of snuff.'

'Why did you want us to eat hay?' shouted some of the crowd.

'Because I eat it myself,' replied Foulon, 'in the shape of beef. Cows eat hay—and I eat cows. Can I wish you anything better?'

M. de Poizc, one of the electors, then addressed the people, urging upon them the illegality of precipitately condemning the accused, without giving him an opportunity of summoning witnesses to prove his innocence.

'Let everything be done in order.'

'Yes, in order,' the mob shouted.

'Every culprit must be first judged,' continued the elector.

'Yes, judged first and hung after,' was answered.

'That comes in order, does it not?' some one cried, and there rose a laugh.

'Gentlemen,' said a M. Osselin, 'in order that a man should be judged, he must have judges. Let us send M. Foulon before the proper tribunal.'

This proposal was met with cries of dissatisfaction.

'We will have him judged at once.'

'We will not let him go before tribunals which are sure to acquit him.'

'The judges are his friends.'

Such were some of the cries that rose upon the proposition of M. Osselin. That gentleman, without losing his presence of mind, replied, 'Well, if you do not like the ordinary judges, it is indispensable that you should nominate others.'

This suggestion did not meet the end proposed by its author.

The mass of the people called repeatedly, 'Do you judge him, you electors!'

'No,' answered M. Osselin; 'we have no authority either to judge or to make judges. Name them yourselves.'

Again M. Osselin was mistaken. He had calculated on the people hesitating to form a criminal tribunal; but with one voice they proposed the curés of S. Étienne du Mont and of S. André des Arcs.

'Two judges are insufficient!' cried M. Osselin; 'there must be seven.'

Then, after a little difficulty, the people agreed upon five more.

'Very well; now you have seven judges,' said M. Osselin, who laboured to save Foulon, and for that purpose raised difficulties; 'you must have also a secretary.'

'You shall be secretary.'

'And a procureur du roi.'

'We name M. Duveyrier.'

That gentleman, forced against his will to act as prosecutor, asked what charges were brought against the accused.

The people shouted in reply that the prisoner impoverished the land to enrich himself, that he wanted to make the peasants eat hay, that he had counselled the king to bombard Paris.

'We bring a capital accusation against him,—of treason towards the nation.'

'If the accusation be capital,' said the two curés, rising, 'we refuse to act as judges.'

'It is capital,' the people shouted.

'We are forbidden by the canons of the Church to shed blood,' said the curé of S. Étienne du Mont, 'therefore my brother priest and I refuse to act as judges.'

A storm burst forth. Some cried, 'The priests are right;' others thundered, 'We are being hoodwinked; they want to save the prisoner.'

The clamour for judgment on the unfortunate Foulon became deafening. The electors began to fear for themselves.

'Gentlemen, we want two judges in the place of the priests,' said one of them.

'We name MM. Bailly and Lafayette.'

'But M. de Lafayette is absent. What is to be done? shall we wait for him, or will you name some one as a substitute?'

'You judges name your coadjutor.'

But at that moment Lafayette came in and seated himself at the bureau of the electors.

With some difficulty silence was impressed on the crowd in the hall, and then Lafayette addressed them.

'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I cannot blame your anger and your indignation against this man. I myself have never esteemed him; I have always regarded him as a rogue, and I believe in my heart that no punishment can exceed his deserts. You wish him to be sentenced; we have the same wish, he shall be sentenced and punished; but he has accomplices, and it is important that we should know their names. I am going to order him to be conducted to the Abbaye; there he shall be tried and condemned to the infamous death he has so richly deserved.'

'Yes, yes!' was the unanimous response; 'send him away to prison. Bring him out.'

Foulon looked round, opened his snuff-box, poured the rest of its contents into his palm, and applied it to his nose.

'This may be my last snuff,' said he collectedly to those who stood by him. 'I have now none to offer you, I grieve to state.'

A man at that instant forced his way before the bureau, and exclaimed, 'You electors are mocking us. What need is there of judging a man who has been judged these thirty years?'

Instantly a rush was made at Foulon, and he was dragged by a multitude of hands along the hall. In vain he struggled; in vain did Lafayette cry to the people to hearken to reason, in vain did Bailly ring his bell and address the mob. Their enemy was within their grasp, and he was swept away from the tribunal.

'Bah!' said Foulon; 'you will sting your hands with the nettles.'

He was drawn through the door; it was like the vortex of a whirlpool, and in this portal the life was almost crushed out of him by the press. As he was thrust into the open air and sunlight, he looked up at the sky, then cloudless and of the deepest azure.

'Stand back!' said he; and disengaging his arm, he flung his bunch of nettles in the faces of those before him. 'Eat them, you rascals,' he said, and laughed bitterly.

His appearance was hailed with repeated thunders of—'To the lantern!'

'Make him ask pardon of the nation,' was shouted.

'Give me space to make my bow,' said Foulon, calm as ever, though a rope was being attached to his neck.

'Ask pardon of the nation!' was repeated.

'I exceedingly regret, great nation of French,' said the old man, bending ironically, and laying his hand on his heart, 'I deplore, with all my heart, that Providence and the stupidity of your king prevented me from having literally made you munch thistles like an ass.'

A scream of rage from those around him was the response.

Instantly he was seen, high above the people's heads, dangling to the lantern, but only for an instant. The rope broke and he fell. He was again run up, and again the cord gave way. Then his head was hacked off and elevated on a pike.

At that same moment the news flew through La Grève that Berthier was entering Paris by the Porte S. Martin, and the crowd, to a man, rushed in that direction.

At the Fontaine Maubuée, the two crowds clashed. He who bore the head of Foulon ran forward amidst the cheers of the mob that accompanied Berthier. In the madness of her own excitement, Madame Plomb did not observe him, and he passed her when her head was turned in the opposite direction. Her yellow flag engrossed her attention; it was a streamer a couple of yards long, and as she brandished it the silk twisted itself around the horses, for sometimes she used it as a whip. Every time the mob shouted, she stood up, whirled her flag, and shouted also.

The people were unable to make her out, with her long black gown, her ash-grey face, blazing eyes, and saffron turban. They supposed she was masked, and represented the genius of Death, and some applauded her: 'Behold Berthier conducted to judgment by Death.'

At the moment that the procession began to move on, a man hastily dressed in a black ox-hide, his face covered with lamp-black, and the horns of the ox on his head, holding a pitchfork, leaped upon the box, and forced the driver to yield his place to him.

Instantly vociferous cheers greeted this new adjunct to the spectacle.

'He is driven to destruction by Death and the Devil!' was cried; and the mob danced and screamed around the coach.

It was then that he who bore Foulon's head on a pike had the brutality to thrust the ghastly object—the dead mouth of which was filled with hay—into the carriage for Berthier to look at.

The miserable man's eyes glazed at the sight, and he smiled a ghastly smile.

Then the bearer of the trophy sprang up behind the carriage, holding his pike aloft.

The band recommenced their martial strain. The soldiers took up the chant, the banners fluttered forward; the devil blew a hideous blast on a cow's horn, and Madame Plomb waved her flag: thus the procession advanced.

Arrived before the Hôtel de Ville, M. de la Rivière with difficulty drew Berthier out of the vehicle. The unfortunate man was sick, faint, and dizzy, and he probably would have been unable to walk, had it been required of him, but a compact body of guards surrounding him bore him forward into the great hall of S. John.

Without being conscious of where he was, or what was being done, he felt himself forced before the bar.

Silence was enforced, and then the procureur, recently appointed by the people, began to speak.

Berthier raised his hand, and all noticed how it shook.

'I am tired,' he said; 'I have not shut my eyes for two or three nights. Let me have a little repose, I pray you.'

'No; no repose for you, till you have been sentenced,' cried the assistants.

'At least give me a chair.'

One was handed to him, and he fell into it, the picture of wretchedness. His eyes were lustreless, his complexion dull and dingy, and his hair limp. His great cheeks hung down like the dewlaps of a cow. He had not shaved for a week, and his mouth and chin were covered with a coarse growth of short hair. When he put up his shaking hand to wipe his eyes, he exposed a dirty hand, and ruffles at his wrist draggled and soiled.

'What is the charge you bring against him?' asked M. Duveyrier.

'He supplied the army with ammunition to butcher us.'

'He has made his fortune by the compact of famine.'

'He has kept back provisions from the city, when the poor were perishing for want of bread.'

'He stole from me my betrothed,' said a young man in a white smock, and with the marks of plaster on his hands and in his hair. 'He destroyed her fair fame, and she drowned herself in the Seine.'

'He robbed me of my little daughter,' cried a quack doctor, stepping forward, 'and I have never seen her since.'

'Monster!' yelled an old woman, shaking her fist in his face, 'where is my little Antoinette?'

'We will only hear crimes against the nation,' said Bailly, the mayor. 'Confine yourselves to these.'

'Why did you bring the troops round Paris? Why did you keep back the corn?' the people cried.

'I have obeyed superior orders,' answered Berthier, huskily. 'You have my papers; examine them.'

'I accuse him,' cried a shrill voice, and Madame Plomb tore her way towards the front,—'I accuse him,—I, his wife!' she said. 'He has been unfaithful to me. He has filled his house with profligates, he has kicked my cat, he has called me the leaden woman, he has shut me up in the Bastille—me, his wife, in the Bastille!'

The crowd groaned, and then hooted.

'Look here, Beast,' she said, letting her streamer hang down above his head; 'is not this like a scythe? am not I Death? The people call me so! See! I suspend the scythe above your head; come on! the devil is waiting for you without; come on!'

'Come on, come on!' roared the mob.

'Were you able to escape in the forest?' she asked.

He did not answer, but looked at her with filmy eyes.

'No,' she replied to herself, 'no, you were not able. I shut the way with a curse. Did your eyes help you? No; I blinded them with a curse. Did your ears assist you? No; I stopped them with a curse. Did your hands do you good service? No; I paralysed them with a curse. Did your feet bear you swiftly along? No; I lamed them with a curse. Come with me; I must hand you over to my friend the devil.'

Bailly sprang to his feet, rang his bell repeatedly, cried to the people to listen to him, but could only obtain a half audience. He laboured to calm this unbridled multitude possessed by rage; he exposed with eloquence that prudence, necessity, reason demand that the life of the accused should be spared till he had been given every opportunity of exculpating himself from the charges laid against him. He showed that before he could be convicted every attempt should be made to discover his accomplices. But his eloquence was in vain. The people were starving, and one of the causes of their hunger was in their power. Some of these people had not eaten for two days, and hunger makes all animals, man included, ferocious.

'I commit him to the prison of the Abbaye Saint-Germain,' said Bailly, in despair. 'Guards, you are responsible for his safety. Guards, attend to me; let him be injured at your peril. Close your ranks about him, and keep off the mob. You are responsible,' he again cried, trembling in his alarm; 'remember!'

With Berthier and the national guard the rest of those in the hall poured out, leaving the electors alone, listening to the hideous rout outside.

On the steps the crowd grappled with the soldiers for the victim; they were thrust this way and that way; they were tripped up; they were blinded by their hats being drawn over their eyes.

Foremost was the plaster-cast maker. He gave a great shout,—his hand was on Berthier's collar.

The next to seize him was the doctor.

'Where is my daughter?' asked the old man, in a scream.

The prisoner did not answer.

'Don't kill him!' shrieked the doctor, as the young man smote at him. 'Spare him till he has told me where my little daughter is. My darling Veronique, where is she? Tell me, Berthier, tell me.' He shook him violently.

'Give me back my Antoinette!' screamed the hag who had accused him in the hall.

'Sacré, let me go!' cried Berthier, struggling with the plaster-cast dealer.

'Answer me, man, for the death of my friend Matthias André!' exclaimed Étienne Percenez, leaping at his throat.

They stumbled down one of the steps, and the doctor fell; Berthier recovered himself, and wrenched a musket from one of the guard, and with it defended himself, madly striking right and left.

The plaster-cast dealer seized a pike, and smote at him with it; the blow fell on Berthier's fingers, and he dropped the gun, screaming with pain. Knives were unsheathed, and the infuriated people rushed in upon him.

'Stay, stay!' cried Madame Plomb, uncoiling the long yellow strip of silk from her head. 'Strangle him; I have promised him this.' She threw the coil about his throat, his hands went up into the air; his feet were tripped up, and he fell.

'Stand off, stand off!' yelled his wife; 'let me kiss him.' She stooped over the suffocating man, whose eyes were shot from their sockets, and whose face was dark with congested blood.

'He is like Gabrielle's father,' exclaimed madame, laughing.

'How his feet spurn, and his hands clutch at the steps! Ah, ah, Berthier! I salute you. You are purple,—leaden like me.'

Then the mob fell upon him with knives and bayonets, and the unfortunate woman saw nothing but a writhing knot of people, splashing in blood, that spouted between their trampling feet, and poured down the steps.

'Ah, ha! madame,' roared a butcher, catching the poor lady by the arm, 'see, see! you have your vengeance on them both now.' He pointed to Berthier's head, at that moment elevated on the end of the pitchfork belonging to the man masked in the black ox-hide.

'Yes,' said madame, 'the devil possesses him now.'

'And your father, madame?'

'What of him? He is not dead, you know. That was poor Adolphe they buried.'

'Pooh!'

Dancing above the sea of heads was a face stiffened in death, with the mouth crammed full of blood-sodden hay.

Madame Berthier gazed wildly at it for a full minute, following it with her eyes.

Then she uttered a scream, so piercing that it was heard in the hall by Bailly and the electors.

'Who have killed him? Show me the murderers!'

'Madame,' said the butcher, 'you have been his murderer. You have killed them both.'

She turned with another cry, thrust her hands into her dishevelled grey hair, and starting forwards, fell down the steps, struck her head against the stones in falling, and would have been trodden to death by the raging crowd, in their eagerness to approach the corpse of Berthier, had not Percenez sprung to her assistance, stooped and raised her in his arms.

'Help me, friend,' he said to a guard, 'let us place her in safety.'

So they bore her, stunned, and with her temple bleeding, to the home of Madame Deschwanden.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

For a fortnight Madame Berthier remained delirious with brain fever. At the end of that time she began to recover, but her memory was impaired. She remembered nothing of her confinement in the Bastille, nothing of her pursuit of Berthier and of the subsequent events. Only hazily did the form of her husband present itself to her mind; it was a note which cyphered, and therefore disturbed, the harmony of memory.

Her former freakish predilections for the colour yellow had suddenly changed into aversion. It was somehow connected with an event which had disappeared from the range of her thoughts; and, as a thread leading nowhere, it irritated her without her being able to account for it.

The cat also was forgotten. She did not allude to him once. But she distinctly knew Gabrielle. Perhaps if the yellow Gabriel had been brought to her she would have recognised him. She did not know when she had made the girl's acquaintance, or where she had first met her; but she knew her face and her name.

Her great delight, on her recovery, was to listen to the corporal and Nicholas conversing about their native land. She paid the greatest attention to their words, laughed childishly, and smiled at Gabrielle.

But especially was she gratified with the song, 'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary?' Nicholas played it to her on his flageolet, and the corporal sang it, till the poor woman knew it by heart.

One day she was sitting in the window, propped up with pillows, looking out at the roof-tops, and the blue sky over them. No one was in the room; but Gabrielle, who had left it for a few minutes, on returning found her singing in a plaintive voice, and crying softly,—

'Heart, my heart, why art thou weary,
Why to grief and tears a prey?
Foreign lands are bright and cheery;
Heart, my heart, what ails thee, say?

That which ails me past appeasing,
I am lost, a stranger here;
What, though foreign lands be pleasing,
Home, sweet home, alone is dear.'

Then, turning to Gabrielle, she asked when they were going.

'Where would you go, dear mistress?' asked the girl.

'Home, to native rocks and sky,' she answered; and then sang,—

'Through the fragrant pine-boughs bending,
I should see the glacier shine;
See the nimble goats ascending
Gentian-dappled slopes in line.

See the cattle, hear the tinkle
Of the merry-clashing bells;
See white sheep the pastures sprinkle
In the verdant dewy dells.'

'Do you know, Gabrielle,' said the lady, interrupting her song, 'the cow-bells are the most beautiful music in the world? Call Nicholas here. He will tell you the same.' As she insisted, Gabrielle was obliged to go to the young man's workshop, and summon him.

'I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Nicholas, but madame is resolved to hear from you that cow-bells make beautiful music.'

'There is no music like them!' exclaimed the youth, becoming at once enthusiastic; 'you should hear them of a summer evening, when the cattle are being driven home to be milked. It is the maddest, merriest clatter in the world. You really must hear them. It is worth going all the way to Switzerland to hear them. I will go to madame instantly.' Rushing into the room to her, he began at once,—'Madame! there is nothing like them. To hear them at a distance, a tinkle here and a tinkle there, as the cattle are being driven from the pastures,—it is like silver music rippling down the sward in countless rills; then the cows unite in the path, and you have fifty twinkling, tinkling notes rushing together; and when they come close to you it is overwhelming,—it is like children's thoughts in play set to music.'

Madame Berthier clapped her hands.

'Gabrielle, when shall we hear the cow-bells? I am dying of impatience.'

'In October, madame, my father and the rest of us return home. Oh, what happiness! The corporal and I have been studying a map, and my father is bent on going by the Jura, and Pontarlier. Then you come winding through the mountains among rocks and pines; that is a sort of first taste, to give one zest, to prepare you for what is to come, lest you should die of over-happiness. And then, then, then,' the lad's great eyes grew bigger, and light danced in the blue irises,—'Then all at once, at a turn of the road, just when least expecting it, or trying not to expect it, for you are hungering all the while—what is that—that ragged line, half way up the sky, so faint, and blue, and silvery? Is it a bank of clouds? No, it is too still for that. It is the Alps, the Alps, the Alps!' He clasped his hands to his eyes, which began to fill. 'And down below your feet lies the lake of Neufchatel, a broad mirror, still and blue, like the sky; and you see the vineyards sweeping down to the very edge of the water, and the old brown towers and steeples of the city against the glistening water. But above them all—there, whither your heart and soul stretch away, there they are, the dear, dear Alps!'

Madame Berthier was nearly as excited as Nicholas.

'And then,' he continued, 'to see again our mountain-flowers. The gentian, we call it himmels-blau, that is, heaven's-blue,—to see the slopes of short grass sprinkled with them, the little azure one and the large dark one, as thick as stars in the sky. And close to the snow you will find the little crocus, myriads white and violet, where the thawed ice has burnt up the grass. And the meadows full of white anemones and golden balls; and the buttercups white and purple, and the primulas in marshy land. Oh, madame! do you know the Alpine rose? Dear Gabrielle, you must come with me, if only to see that! Think, up among the mountains a patch of grey rock, and above it a bush blazing with crimson flowers, and they are sometimes red as blood, and sometimes pale pink like your own sweet cheek—but not as it is now, it has grown red. Then the leaves are glossy green, like the myrtle, and underneath a russet-brown, the colour of the shaggy goats. You have tracts of these glorious flowers, and beside the silver-grey old rock they are so lovely. You would say the mountain blushed to think how beautiful it was.'

'Gabrielle!' cried madame, in ecstasy, 'I shall die, unless I go quickly to see the Alpine roses.'

'And the pinks,' continued Nicholas; 'lovely little red pinks in tufts, and sometimes their leaves are snipped, just as mother cuts the paper for the candlesticks, and of a tender lake tint.'

'When are we going, Gabrielle?' asked madame.

'We start in October, I hope,' said Nicholas; 'my father's time is up then.'

'Yes,' said the convalescent, 'we will all go then, Gabrielle and I.'

'That will be charming,' exclaimed the young man, 'will it not, mademoiselle?'

The girl did not answer.

'Yes,' continued the lady; 'we shall all go together, and then you, Nicholas, and Gabrielle can live with me; you know I have money.'

'My dear madame,' said the girl, becoming scarlet, 'let us talk of something else.'

'But I cannot, dear Gabrielle; I can think of nothing else, and it is such surpassing delight to me to hear the corporal and Nicholas talk. It will be so nice, too, for you and Nicholas.'

'The corporal, and Madame Deschwanden, and Madeleine will all be there,' said the girl, hiding her face that she might not encounter the nods and smiles of Nicholas.

'Don't be so sure of that,' said the little lady of the house, bustling into the room. 'Switzerland again, of course. I go there! not a bit, and get lost down a chasm in a glacier. Mon Dieu! fancy that, and I might at the moment have on my best gown and best bonnet. Climb your mountain peaks, indeed! you will see me put my head out of the top of one of these chimneys first, and cry "sweep, sweep!" Deschwanden may go, and you may go, Nicholas, if you like, but I remain at Paris. Would you have me migrate to the land of barbarism, at my time of life, and at a time, too, when the metropolis is a scene of the most charming incidents? My faith! It is as good as a play to see what is going on here—and you would tear me away between the acts, make me shut up the novel at the first volume! You are much mistaken if you think you will get me to Switzerland.'

'But what is to be done, mother?' asked Nicholas; 'my father has set his heart on returning to his father-land, and I verily believe it would be his death to have to forego what has been his desire for many years.'

'Let him go.'

'But he cannot leave you behind.'

'Why not? Let him imagine I am dead. Let him say to himself, "I am a widower once again; I am free as a bird, I will spread my wings, and seek a distant clime." Pretty bird he'd make, though! You Germans have no neatness, no delicacy and buoyancy of construction. You are great hawks—penguins, who never rise. But we French are ever on tiptoe, ready to soar; we only want a breath of gas in our bones, a few feathers on our backs, and you would find the sky swarm with us, laughing, chattering, wheeling here and there, coquetting, always polite, always graceful, and never flying beyond sight of la belle France.'

'But my father cannot in conscience——'

'Stay! never mention that word in my hearing. There it is, that is the mischief of it. Conscience is the lead that keeps you always in one position. I thought to have died of laughing. I saw in a shop window a range of dolls,—fat things rounded off below, without perceptible legs. You knocked them about, and they rocked to and fro, and always righted in the same position. I rushed into the shop, and I said—"Oblige me, those are German toys, are they not?" "Madame, you are right," was the answer I received. Well, Nicholas! I thought at once of you and your father, leaded with your dreadful dumpy conscience. My faith! why does not this precious conscience keep the corporal from going to Versailles?'

'What do you mean, mother? he is not going there.'

'Yes, he is. He has received orders transferring him there; he has to attend in the palace, as one of the guard. If he is so fond of me, let him refuse. You say he can't,—he is ordered there. Well, there is no help for it, he leaves me. Now let him suppose he is ordered off to Switzerland; there he goes. I will order him off. Right about face, quick, march!'

'Surely, mother, you will not be so heartless?'

'Ah bah! I shall do well enough here. I can't go to Versailles after him, can I? Well, and I won't go to Switzerland with him. That is my mind. I have my business and my pleasure here in Paris; I could not live away from either. Ask a nightingale to visit and admire the beauties of the bottom of the sea! invite a minnow to soar to the stars! expect a rose to throw its roots into the air and thrust its blossoms under the soil! Pshaw! This is just as sensible as asking me to plunge into your lakes, ascend your Alps, and bury myself in your mountain gorges under avalanches and glaciers and Heaven knows what besides.'

'Where is my father now?'

'He is out. He has to remove at once to the Swiss battalion at Rueil, and thence he will be sent with a new company to attend on the royal family and guard the palace. You see the French guard have at Versailles, as here, merged themselves in a national guard, so I fancy the Court prefers to be defended by foreign troops. Here he comes!'

The corporal entered and saluted Madame Berthier and his wife, then he went up to Gabrielle and patted her gently on the cheek. Nicholas gave her a knowing nod, as much as to say, 'you are a great pet of my father's.'

'Are you transferred to Versailles?' asked Nicholas; 'mother has just disconcerted us with that announcement.'

'Yes,' answered the corporal; 'I have been ordered to the barracks at Rueil for a week, and after that we are to be sent to Versailles; the Swiss guard at the palace is about to be reinforced.'

'It will not be for long,' said Nicholas.

'No, only till October,' answered the corporal, brushing up the hair on either side of his head; 'and then—' he rubbed his hand; 'then we set our faces homewards. I shall be free.'

'And I daresay you will not be sorry for it,' said Gabrielle, gently, lifting her eyes to his face.

'No, my dear, I shall be rejoiced. It does not please me to have to range myself against your countrymen. A civil war is a terrible thing, and I am half French myself.'

'You half French!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden, with a shrug of the shoulders and a curl of the lip.

'Yes, wife, I am; not only because of my union with you, but also because I have spent many of my best years in this land, chiefly, however, because I entirely sympathise with the struggle that is begun. Had not we the same sort of thing in our land? There was Werner Stauffacher, Erni of Melchthal, and Walter Fürst——'

'Enough of them,' said madame, with an impatient stamp.

'Corporal,' asked the convalescent lady, 'are you going to return to where the cow-bells ring, and where there are Alps half way up to the sky?'

'Yes, madame, please God, and with the help of blessed Klaus!'

'And you will see the pinks, and the gentians, and the roses of the Alps?'

'I must, indeed I must,' exclaimed the corporal. 'Ah, ha! Nicholas, in October, three months more!'

'We are all going together,' said the poor lady; 'we all want to hear the cow-bells, and see the Alpine roses.'

'That will be perfect,' answered Corporal Deschwanden.

'Then Nicholas and Gabrielle can keep house for me.'

'That will crown all,' said the corporal, brushing up his hair over the right ear, then over the left, then above his brow.

'Gabrielle!' cried madame; but the girl darted out of the room.

'Nicholas,' said the invalid; 'I want Gabrielle, will you kindly fetch her for me?'

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A last arrow remained in the quiver of the Court party.

The course pursued by the National Assembly after the reunion of the orders, proved to the aristocracy that a revolution could alone reinstate them in their ancient prerogatives and save them from disappearing as a class in the rising tide. They meditated a revolution accordingly, to be thus executed: the king and queen were to escape from Versailles and take refuge in the fortress of Metz, then powerfully garrisoned, and the head quarters of the army; when there, they could dissolve the Assembly, reduce Paris, and re-establish the ancient régime.

With their usual recklessness and folly, the members of this party allowed their plot to become public; they boasted and threatened, and enrolled members in the conspiracy, exasperating and alarming the popular party to such an extent that it became apparent to every one that a few days must decide whether the revolution was to be begun by the nobles or by the people.

The king and his family must not remain at Versailles, that was the conclusion of each party. Was he to be taken to Metz or to Paris? In the first case, the country would be plunged in civil war; the other alternative made the extinction of the aristocracy, as a class, certain.

In the meantime, the French guard had been dismissed from their attendance on the royal family, and the palace was placed under the protection of the Swiss and the body-guard alone.

A Flanders regiment was introduced into Versailles, and two hundred chasseurs of the Trois-Évêchés, from their barracks at Rambouillet, and the same number of the dragoons of Lorraine.

On the 2nd of October a dinner was given by the body-guard to the newly-arrived Flemish regiment, in the theatre of the palace. The stage was occupied by the officers, seated at a horse-shoe table; in the orchestra were the bands of the corps, and in the pit the tables of the soldiers of the Flemish regiment, the chasseurs, and the dragoons of Lorraine.

After the feast had lasted some hours, the king and the queen appeared in the royal box. Instantly an unanimous cry of 'Long live the king! long live the queen!' arose from the hall. All the banqueters rose, and the soldiers of Flanders and Lorraine, delighted to see the royal family, whom they hardly knew, overleaped the balustrade of the amphitheatre to approach and cheer them.

The king, moved by these tokens of affection, left his box and went round the table on the stage followed by the queen, who held her daughter by the hand, whilst the dauphin was carried by an officer of the guards.

In the midst of the general enthusiasm, the band struck up the air of Grétry,—'O Richard, O mon roi! l'univers t'abandonne!'

When the royal family retired, they were followed by the officers and soldiers drunk with enthusiasm and wine, and assembling in the marble court under the king's windows, they repeated their cheers, and promises to die in his defence. White cockades were distributed by the ladies of the court, and a national badge having been shown to the excited soldiers was greeted with scorn and was trampled under foot.

Next day followed another feast, and a similar display of zeal for the cause of the queen against that of the nation.

On the 4th, as might have been anticipated, Paris was in an uproar. The people felt instinctively that not a day was to be lost. The aristocracy might at any moment snatch the king from Versailles, carry him to a fortress, surround him with troops, and from thence make him dictate laws and destroy the scaffolding of the new constitution, in the erection of which the National Assembly was laboriously engaged. If the Court party were allowed to steal a march on the people, all was lost.

The most inflammatory harangues in the Palais Royal assisted in exciting the general conflagration. The scenes preceding the seizure of the Bastille were renewed; but there was no fortress to be captured on this occasion,—it was the person of the king must be secured, that the democracy might place him in the revolutionary vortex, might keep watch over him, and disperse the clique which dragged him into schemes antagonistic to the wishes and welfare of the nation.

On the morning of the 5th, all Paris was in movement; but that which determined its march on Versailles, was the famine.

In spite of the efforts of the committee of subsistence established by Bailly, corn, and flour especially, arrived in small quantities.

At four o'clock in the morning a crowd besieged the shops of the bakers. For hours the people remained patiently en queue; then they began to fight to obtain for money a loaf often insufficient to fill the mouths that clamoured for it at home. The wretched quality of the bread added to the fury of the populace. Little more was needed to produce an explosion. The account of the scenes which had been enacted at Versailles fell like a spark upon these inflammable tempers, and the fire blazed forth in an instant.

'Let us bring the baker among us!' cried Madeleine, who, like the rest, had been waiting for the morning's provision of bread.

'Yes, we must have the chief baker here,' shouted several others.

Madeleine, without another word, seized on a drum, and rattled it vigorously. The women trooped round her, and in a moment she was at the head of a legion of famished, furious women, some of whom had not tasted food for thirty hours.

'Let us march to Versailles,' cried several; 'let us besiege the great bakehouse.'

'Lead on, you girl with the drum!' cried others.

'Whither shall I lead?' asked Madeleine.

'To Versailles!' was the general shout.

'We will tell the Assembly that we starve,'—'we will bring the king to Paris, and he shall see how hungry we are,'—'we will surround him, and protect the good papa from our enemies and his.' Such were some of the cries that arose.

'Let us go to the Hôtel de Ville!' called another.

'Yes, yes, to the Hôtel de Ville first,' the mob clamoured.

It happened just then that Madame Deschwanden and Gabrielle were passing. The little lady saw Madeleine at once, and she ran to her, arrested her in her drumming, and asked, 'My dear! for pity's sake, what is the matter?'

'Mother, the poor things are starving; and the great nobles at Versailles are going to carry our king off to Metz and make war on the people; then we shall have famine and war together.'

'That will never do,' said madame; 'no one will want new caps, and I shall be out of work. But why are you drumming?'

'Mother! we are going to the Hôtel de Ville first, and then on to Versailles to bring the king to Paris.'

'Nonsense, Madeleine.'

'We are going to do it,' said the girl bluntly; 'the men are cowards,—see what the women will do.'

'Oh ecstasy! oh raptures!' exclaimed Madame Deschwanden; 'what sport! it is as good as a play. I shall accompany you, and Gabrielle shall come too.'

'What, to Versailles?' asked the little peasantess in dismay; 'I pray you let me remain behind.'

'No, come with me, I will protect you; the day is fine, and we shall have a charming expedition, and shall see such dresses. Ecstasy! raptures!'

In vain did Gabrielle plead; Madame Deschwanden linked her arm within her own and drew her along.

Onward drave the concourse of women—shop-girls, milliners, portresses, servants, market-women—till they reached the Place de Grève. The cavalry of the national guard were drawn up there; the women charged them, and with a volley of stones drove them back, for the soldiers could not make up their minds to fire upon them.

They would have burnt the Hôtel de Ville, in their ravenous wildness, because it contained no bread, had not the solemn, gigantic Stanislas Maillard, one of the conquerors of the Bastille, arrested them. He beat a drum and obtained a hearing. He offered to conduct the crowd to Versailles, and the women, liking his appearance and knowing his name, put themselves under his order. In half an hour the army of women was in marching order; they drew with them the cannon of the Place de Grève, and were armed with sticks, cutlasses, and a few guns.

Whilst this troop of women marched to Versailles, Paris was in ebullition.

Early in the morning, the alarm-bell had been rung by the fellow now in command of the men who marched after the women. He had been caught in the act and hung, but his bull-neck had saved him, and the women had cut him down. The national guard, assembling first in their districts, betook themselves in a mass to the Hôtel de Ville and filled La Grève, crying, 'To Versailles!' A deputation of grenadiers sought out Lafayette, who, along with the municipality, used his utmost endeavours to arrest the movement. One of these men addressed the general, told him he was being deceived, that it was time that things should be brought to a climax, that the people were wretched, that the source of the evil was at Versailles, and that they were resolved on bringing the king to Paris.

Lafayette resisted, descended to the square, harangued the grenadiers, but his voice was drowned by cries of 'To Versailles! to Versailles!'

For several hours he attempted by speeches and by signs to control the military mob. Then he turned to re-enter the town-hall, but his grenadiers barred the passage. 'Morbleu! general,' they said, 'you shall stop with us; you shall not abandon us.'

At length an order was transmitted to him from the municipality requiring him, 'on account of the urgency of the circumstances and the desire of the people,' to transport himself to Versailles. The general mounted his white horse, put himself at the head of his battalions, and gave the command to march, which was received with acclamations.

It was then six o'clock in the evening, and the rain had begun to fall.

We must return to Versailles.

The ministers had been informed of the march of the women of Paris, and M. de Saint-Priest wrote a letter to the king, who was out hunting in the wood of Meudon, urging him to return immediately; and M. de Cubières, their esquire, was despatched with it, whilst detachments of the body-guard were sent in different directions to protect the king's return. At three o'clock M. de Cubières found the king and gave him the note. 'What!' exclaimed Louis, 'the women of Paris are coming to ask me for bread. Poor creatures, I would supply them without giving them the trouble to come for it, if I had it.'

A few minutes after the return of the king, the women arrived at the barrier.

In the meantime, the regiment of Flanders armed, and the body-guard mounted their horses; the latter took up their position in the Place d'Armes before the grating that enclosed the court of the ministers, whilst some invalids, the Swiss corps, together with the Flemish regiment, formed a line of battle on the left, and the chasseurs and the national guard occupied the right. A body of dragoons was sent down the avenue of Paris to take up a position before the hall of the Menus-Plaisirs.

These dispositions were no sooner taken than the women entered Versailles.

The Count of Luxembourg asked the king for orders to give the body-guard. 'Nonsense,' replied Louis XVI, 'orders against a band of women! you are joking.'

The women were no sooner in the town than they invaded the court of Menus-Plaisirs, and demanded to be admitted to the Assembly.

Maillard and half-a-dozen women were alone admitted, after some difficulties had been made; one of these was Madeleine with her drum, and another was Gabrielle, who clung to her. A third bore a tambourine at the end of a long pole.

'We come,' said Maillard, sword in hand, his black suit splashed with mud and tattered, 'we come to demand bread, and the punishment of the body-guard who have insulted the national cockade. We are good patriots; on our road we have torn down the black cockades, and I will have the pleasure of tearing one before the Assembly.'

Whereupon another man, he with the bull-neck, told his story, how he had been nearly hung that morning for having rung the alarm-bell. 'We will force every one to wear the patriotic badge,' he said. Thereupon murmurs arose; turning towards those who uttered these sounds of dissatisfaction, he asked, 'What! are we not all brothers?'

Mounier, the president, replied calmly, 'No one in this Assembly will deny that all men are to be considered as brothers; the indignation you resent was aroused by your menace of using force. Speak with respect where you are.'

Thereupon the women began to cry out for bread. The president assured them that the Assembly was distressed to learn the state of famine in which the capital was plunged, and that it would use its utmost endeavours to obtain a free circulation of corn, and provide for the regular supply of grain. He told them that their presence at Versailles was of no earthly use, that it impeded the debates, and could not relieve the scarcity of provisions.

'That is not enough,' said the great Maillard; and the women exclaimed again, 'Bread, bread!'

A member then proposed that a deputation should be sent to the king to inform him of the starving condition of the capital. This proposition was accepted. The Bishop of Langres took the president's chair, and Mounier set out, moodily, at the head of a deputation, followed by the women in a crowd.

The rain fell in torrents, and the avenue of Paris was a lake of mud. Followed by the wild band of females fantastically dressed, some in rags, some armed, shouting, singing, cursing, Mounier and the deputies made their way towards the palace. Body-guards were patrolling and galloping about, and mistaking the president for a leader of the insurrection, and wanting to disperse the multitude, they galloped through the deputation and their suite, scattering them and splashing them from head to foot with mire.

By this time the ragged army of men which followed that of the women had entered the Place d'Armes by the avenues of Saint Cloud and Paris, armed with sticks, pitchforks, and a few muskets. The women, rolling into the place in floods, were mingled with the crowd of men, and vented their rage against the body-guard in invectives. As the different detachments of these guards, which had been sent in quest of the king, arrived and joined those before the court of the ministers, they were attacked and insulted. A pike flung against a guard galloping to rejoin his squadron, fell between the legs of his horse and threw it down. The soldier fell, and the populace crowded round him to seize him, when he was rescued by M. Desroches, captain of the national guard, arriving at the moment with his company. He attempted to capture the young man who had flung the pike, but the people rushed between him and the youth and facilitated his escape.

Whilst this was taking place, the regiment of Flanders was the object of the caresses of the women. Théroigne de Méricourt, covered with a scarlet cloak, penetrated the ranks of the soldiers, flattered them, and entreated them not to oppose the people. A great many women, plucking up courage at the immobility of the guards, who had orders not to use their arms, advanced to the very feet of the horses and tried to creep between them into the court before the palace.

All of a sudden, a party of women, headed by a man named Burnout, in the uniform of the national Parisian guard, rushed upon the mounted body-guards. The horses, frightened at the noise, and the charge of Burnout, sabre in hand, swerved, and allowed him to pass. But, separated from the women who were unable to follow him, he found himself alone between the railing and the soldiers. He was immediately pursued; but he escaped in the direction of the national guard, who, it will be remembered, were drawn up on the right of the body-guard, with whom they were on the worst possible terms. Burnout received several blows with the flat of the sabre, and fell over a bucket; this caused the French guard to raise the cry that the body-guard were massacring one of their men; whereupon a musket was fired by one of the national guard, and the arm of an officer in pursuit of Burnout was broken. The commander of the national guard, Lecointre, a violent partisan of extreme revolutionary measures, at once sought the officers of the body-guard, to learn from them what were their intentions. They replied that they had no wish to fall out with the national guard. Then he hurried to the regiment of Flanders, which had been already tampered with by the women, and asked them how they purposed to conduct themselves towards the people. The soldiers replied that they would not fire upon them, and they gave Lecointre and his guards some of their cartouches.

During this time Mounier and his deputation passed through the lines of the guard before the grating, were received with honour, and admitted to the court along with twelve women, of whom were Madeleine and Gabrielle. Five women were alone permitted to see the king. Madeleine thrust herself forward—Gabrielle remained behind, in the ante-chamber. She was weary, faint, and hungry. Madeleine had drawn her along with her against her wishes, and the poor girl had been frightened and miserable all day.

She took the opportunity of sinking into a chair; and then, overcome by her weariness, her tears began to flow. M. d'Estaing happening to pass through the ante-room at the moment, saw that she was crying, and coming towards her said kindly, 'My child, you are weeping because you have not seen the king.' Then he took her by the hand and led her into the royal apartment, where were the king, his ministers, and the deputation.

'Why did you come to Versailles?' asked M. de Saint-Priest of Gabrielle.

'Sir,' she answered, 'I was forced into the troop;' and she looked reproachfully at Madeleine.

'We have come to Versailles,' said Madeleine, 'to inform the king that his good town of Paris wants him. We are afraid that some people will take him from this place and carry him to Metz, and we have come to bring him home with us.'

'They are hungry,' cried Mounier; 'the women clamour for bread.'

'But you should have asked bread of the municipality,' said Saint-Priest, addressing Madeleine.

'We went to the Hôtel de Ville,' she replied, 'and we found no one there.'

The king, whose eye had rested on Gabrielle, saw that she was deadly pale. He asked her if she were ill.

'Sire,' she answered, 'I am tired and faint.'

The king filled a goblet with wine, and took it to her and made her drink. She thanked him with a speaking look, and tasted it; but at the same moment every object swam before her eyes, and she fainted away. When she returned to herself, the king was stooping over her. He gave her smelling-salts, and sprinkled water on her brow. Madeleine fanned her and she recovered.

Louis gave a written order for the immediate supply of food to Paris, and handed a copy to Madeleine, who rushed down the court, shouting 'Long live the king!' She held Gabrielle's arm in hers, and passed outside the railing, and between the soldiers to the crowd, to show them the order.

Instantly it was discovered that the copy was not signed, and they were constrained to return to the king and request his signature.

When they reappeared, the women outside were in a state of violent exasperation; they had taken it into their heads that Madeleine had been bribed; and they cried out that the king had given her twenty-five louis-d'or. In vain did the girl empty her pockets to show there was no money there; they then assaulted Gabrielle. A great commotion arose. Some cried out, 'These girls have betrayed us. They have sold us to the queen!' and a thousand voices screamed, 'Hang the traitors!'

What caused this sudden transition of feeling,—whether it arose from the jealousy of those who had failed to obtain admission, whether it was that Madeleine appeared too enthusiastic in her praise of his majesty, or whether the tumult had been excited by a malicious slander,—it is impossible to say. Certain it is, however, that a crowd of wild, ravenous amazons attacked the two girls with their fists; a garter was knotted round Madeleine's neck, and she was dragged off towards the nearest lamp, and would infallibly have been strung up to it, had not the guards interfered and rescued her. Gabrielle in the meanwhile was in the grasp of a furious termagant, who fastened her hands round her throat and attempted to strangle her. Frantic women around shrieked to her to deliver up the money which she had received from the king; her dress was torn, and her hands were wounded in struggling with the infuriated savages; her consciousness was beginning to leave her again, as the pressure on her throat tightened, when a stout arm swept her assailants to right and left, a hand seized her, and she was rapidly drawn away from the place of danger. The crowd was closely wedged together, and she and her deliverer disappeared from those who were incensed against her, amongst a throng who knew nothing of what was being enacted a few ranks beyond them. Her conductor worked his way through the people, and in another moment, with an air of relief, he exclaimed, 'Praised be God and Bruder Klaus, we are safe now!'

'Nicholas!' exclaimed Gabrielle, 'how came you here?'

'When I heard you were with Madeleine, I followed. I have kept as close to you as possible since I saw you leave the hall of the Assembly. It was well that I did so.'

Gabrielle was sinking from fatigue and fear.

'Oh, Nicholas, I cannot endure any more. I shall die here.'

'No, no,' exclaimed he; 'lean against that wall.'

'Here!' he cried to a priest who was passing, 'M. le Curé, help!'

'What is the matter?' asked the priest, stopping.

Gabrielle suddenly revived, and exclaimed with an accent of appealing distress,—'M. Lindet, help me!'

'Who are you?' asked the deputy for the clergy of Évreux.

'She is called Gabrielle André,' answered Nicholas; 'can you do anything for her? She is worn out, faint, and ill.'

'Follow me,' said the curé; 'she shall have rest and refreshment in my lodgings; I know little Gabrielle well.'

Nicholas lifted the girl in his arms, held her very tight to his breast as he carried her, and did not deposit her till he had reached the priest's door.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

By the fire-side, after having partaken of some food, Gabrielle recovered.

Lindet insisted on giving up to her his room and bed, and on sitting through the night in the kitchen with Nicholas.

The darkness had set in, and the rain continued to fall. The streets were still in commotion, and the young man who was anxious to know what had become of Madeleine, sallied forth in quest of her. He found the whole town in disorder. Women and men, armed with pikes, hatchets and cudgels, pursued and insulted the body-guard, which had received orders not to retaliate. The drum rattling in every street summoned the national guard to the Place d'Armes. But many of the guards, unable to sympathise with the exasperation against the body-guard, fomented by Lecointre, withdrew to their homes.

After the departure of the women, Mounier had remained at the Château. He firmly declared to the ministers, that the National Assembly required of the king his frank acceptation of the articles of the constitution and of the rights of men. He pointed out to them that at such a time of popular effervescence, it was most important that there should be no hesitation or prevarication; and that a refusal would drive the Parisians to measures of the utmost violence. He promised, if the king would sign the Declaration, to announce the fact to the people as a singular benefit, and he was convinced that it would greatly tend to diminish the popular excitement.

The king thereupon reassembled a cabinet council, and Mounier awaited the issue.

In the other parts of the palace the liveliest anxiety prevailed. The cries of rage vomited by the populace against the queen made it necessary to provide for her safety, and orders were given for preparations to be made for her departure, along with the dauphin, to Rambouillet. Five carriages issued from the royal stables, and drew up at the iron gates before the Orangery, and those of the Dragon. The Swiss opened the former gates, but the national guardsmen of Versailles rushed to them and shut them again, and refused to permit the Dragon gates to be opened at all.

The order to retire had been given at night-fall to all the troops drawn up in the Place d'Armes. The regiment of Flanders quitted its position and withdrew to the court of the Grandes-Ecuries. The body-guard defiled in turn; one detachment followed the avenue of S. Cloud, to betake itself to the Hôtel de Charrost, but the largest portion directed its course down the avenue de Sceaux, towards their own hôtel. Mud and stones were cast at them, and they were saluted with yells of hatred. Some of the guard losing control over themselves fired their pistols, hit three men, and tore the clothes of two others with their bullets. The national guard instantly discharged a volley, wounded one horse and killed another. The soldier mounted on the latter fell, and the women precipitated themselves upon him and would have killed him, had not two officers of the national guard come to his rescue.

Those who had fired on the body-guard returned to their barrack on the Place d'Armes, and demanded ammunition. It was refused. A lieutenant of Versailles threatened to blow out the brains of those who kept watch over it, unless it were given up. Thereupon a barrel of gunpowder was produced, and Lecointre loaded two cannons and ran them out opposite the balustrade, so as to command the flank of the troops which still covered the castle, and the body-guard who were returning to the square. The commandant of the body-guard, the Duke de Guiche, finding that the mob were resolved on attacking them in their hôtel, and that the national guard were making common cause with the people, deemed it advisable to return to the palace; but finding the grand entrance closed and cannon directed against them, they galloped down the Rue de Satory, and making a circuit entered the court of the Ministers by the Rue de la Surintendance. The mob, furious at their escape, flung themselves against the railing, vociferating loudly, and they would have forced the gates, had not a detachment of Swiss been marched to the reinforcement of the sentinels.

The town then presented a sinister appearance. The rain continued to fall, and the night was very dark. The shops were closed, with the exception of the bakers' and the vintners'. All the inhabitants of Versailles had fastened their doors and put shutters over their windows. The lamps at wide distances cast a lugubrious light on the patrols of the national guard, and the crowd of men and women in rags, covered with mud and dripping, who battered at every door, and demanded food and shelter.

Some of the crowd burst open the gates of the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and took refuge among the soldiers; others invaded the barrack of the French guard, and crowded into it out of the rain and cold. Four thousand, mostly women, occupied the hall of the Assembly, shouting, swearing, and making an uproar. Maillard alone could keep them quiet by continual haranguing. Some of the body-guard, those who had been to the Hôtel de Charrost, finding their position full of danger, resolved on joining their comrades. On issuing from their barrack they were pelted with stones; but they spurred their horses into a gallop and reached the court of the Ministers, though not without wounds.

Mounier waited on at the door of the council chamber to know the result of the deliberations within. It was nine o'clock, and nothing was decided. Then the young Duke of Richelieu arrived disguised like one of the mob, ragged, muddy, wet through, panting for breath, to announce to the king that a fresh swarm of people was on its way from Paris; he had mingled with them, had heard their threats against the queen, their vows of vengeance against the court. Shortly after the news reached the palace, that Lafayette was marching upon Versailles at the head of the Parisian militia or national guard.