the day. After which he descended into the court-yard to assure the soldiers that the king had promised to accede to their wishes; and then returned to the royal apartments to inform the king that contentment was restored, and that he himself would be responsible for the tranquillity of the night.
The royal family, exhausted with the fatigues of so terrible a day, retired to rest, the queen expressly enjoining her ladies to follow her example. Fortunately they were too anxious for her safety to obey her, and, with their own attendants, kept watch in the room outside her bed-chamber. But La Fayette, in spite of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself, felt no such anxiety. He declared himself tired and sleepy; and, leaving the palace, went to a friend's house to ask for a bed.[5] Yet he well knew that the crowd was still assembled around the palace, and was increasing in violence. Though the night was stormy and wet, the rioters sought no shelter except such as was afforded by a hurried resort to the wine-shops in the neighborhood, where they inflamed their intoxication, and from which they soon returned to renew their savage clamor and threats, increasing the disorder by keeping up a frequent fire of their muskets. Throughout the night the Duc d'Orleans was briskly going to and fro, his emissaries scattering money among the rioters, who seemed to have no definite purpose or plan, till, as day began to break, one of the gates leading into the Princes' Court was seen to be open. It had been intrusted to some of La Fayette's soldiers, and could not have been opened without treachery. The crowd poured in, uttering fiercer threats than ever, from the belief that their prey was within their reach. There was, in truth, nothing between them and the staircase which led to the royal apartments except two gallant gentlemen, M. des Huttes and M. Moreau, the sentries of the detachment of the Body- guard on duty, whose quarters were at the head of the staircase in a saloon opposite to the queen's chamber. But these brave men were worthy of the best days of the French army. The more formidable the mob, and the greater the danger, the more imperative to their loyal hearts was the duty to defend those whose safety was intrusted to their vigilance; and with so dauntless a front did they stand to their posts that for a moment the ruffians recoiled and shrunk from attacking them, till D'Orleans himself came forward, waving to them with his hand a signal to force the way in, and pointing out to them which way to take.
What, then, could two men effect against such a multitude? Des Huttes perished, pierced by a hundred pikes, and torn into pieces by his blood- thirsty assailants. Moreau, with equal valor, but with better fortune, backed up the stairs, fighting so desperately as he retreated that he gave his comrades time to barricade the doors leading to the queen's apartments, and to come to his assistance. As they drew him back, terribly wounded, into the guardroom, De Varicourt and Durepaire took his place. De Varicourt was soon slain, but Durepaire, a man of prodigious strength and prowess, held the assassins at bay for some time, till he too fell, reduced to helplessness by a score of deep wounds; when he, in his turn, was replaced by Miomandre. His devotion and intrepidity equaled that of his comrades; he was eminently skillful also in the use of his weapons, and with his own hand he struck down many of his assailants, till he was gradually forced back by numbers, when he placed his musket as a barrier across the door-way, and thus still kept his enemies at bay, while he shouted to the queen's ladies, now separated from him by but a single partition, to save the queen, for 'the tigers with whom he was struggling were aiming at her life.'
In the annals of the ancient chivalry of the nation it had been recorded as the most brilliant feat of Bayard, that, on a bridge of the Garigliano, he had for a while, with his single arm, stemmed the onset of two hundred Spaniards; and that glorious exploit of the model hero of the nation had never been more faithfully copied and more nobly rivaled than it was on this morning of shame and danger by Miomandre and his intrepid comrades, as they successively stepped into the breach to fight against those whom he truly called, not men, but tigers. It was but a brief moment before he too was struck down; but he had gained for the ladies a respite sufficient to enable them to secure the safety of their royal mistress. They roused her from her bed, for her fatigue had been so great that she had hitherto slept soundly through the uproar, and hurried her off to the apartments of the king, who, having in been just similarly awakened, was coming to seek her; and in a few minutes the whole family was collected in his antechamber; while the Body-guard occupied the queen's bedroom, and the rioters, balked of their intended victim, were pillaging the different rooms into which they had been able to make their way. Luckily, La Fayette was still absent: he was having his hair dressed with great composure, while the mob, for whose contentment and orderly behavior he had vouched, was plundering the royal palace and seeking its owners to murder them; and in his absence the Marquis de Vaudreuil and a body of nobles took upon themselves the office of defenders of the crown, and, going down to the court-yard, reproached the National Guard with their inaction at such a moment of danger, and with their manifest sympathy with the rioters. At first, out of mere shame, the National Guard attempted to justify themselves: 'they had been told,' they said, 'that the Body-guard were the aggressors; that they had attacked the people.' 'Do you pretend to believe,' said the gallant marquis, 'that two hundred men have been mad enough to attack thirty thousand ?' The argument was irresistible; they declared that if the Body-guard would assume the tricolor, they would stand by them as brothers. And, by a reaction not uncommon at such times of excitement, the two regiments became reconciled in a moment. As no tricolor cockades could be procured, they exchanged shakos, and, in many cases, arms. And presently, when the Coup-tetes, after mutilating the bodies of two of the Body-guard who had been killed on the previous evening, were preparing to murder two or three more who had fallen into their hands, the National Guard dashed to their rescue, shouting out, with a curious identification of their force with the old French army, that 'they would save the Body-guard who saved them at Fontenoy,' and brought them off unhurt.
Balked of their expected prey, the rioters grew more furious than ever; in useless wrath they kept firing against the walls of the palace, and shouting out a demand for the queen to show herself. She, with her children, was still in the king's apartment, where the princesses, the ministers, and a few courtiers were also assembled. Necker, in an agony of terror and distress, sat with his face buried in his hands, unable to offer any advice; La Fayette, who had just arrived, dwelt upon the dangers which he had run, though no one else knew what they were, and assured the king of the power which he still possessed to allay the tumult, if the reasonable demands of the people (as he called them) were granted. Marie Antoinette alone was undaunted and calm; or, at least, if in the depths of her woman's heart she felt terror at the sanguinary and obscene threats of her ruffianly enemies, she scorned to show it. When the firing began, M. de Luzerne, one of the ministers, had quietly placed himself between her and the window; but, while she thanked him for his devotion, she begged him to retire, saying, with her habitually gracious courtesy, that it was her place to be there,[6] not his, since the king could not afford to have so faithful a servant endangered. And now, holding her little son and daughter, one in each hand, she stepped out on the balcony, to confront those who were shouting for her blood. 'No children!' was their cry. She led the dauphin and his sister back into the room, and, returning to the balcony, stood before them alone, with her hands crossed and her eyes looking up to heaven, as one who expected instant death, with a firmness as far removed from defiance as from supplication. Even those ruthless miscreants were awed by her magnanimous fearlessness; not a shot was fired; for a moment it seemed as if her enemies had become her partisans. Loud shouts of 'Bravo!' and 'Long live the queen!' were heard on all sides; and one ruffian, who raised his gun to take aim at her, had his weapon beaten down by those who stood near him, and ran some risk of being himself sacrificed to their indignation. But this impulse of respect, like other impulses of such a people, was short-lived, and presently the multitude began to raise a shout, which expressed the original purpose which had led the majority to march upon Versailles. 'To Paris!' was the cry, and again La Fayette volunteered his advice, urging the king to comply with the request. By this time Louis had learned the value of the marquis's loyalty. But he had no alternative. It was evident that the rioters had the power of compelling compliance with their demand. And accordingly he authorized the marquis to promise that he would remove his family to Paris, and a few minutes afterward he himself went out on the balcony with the queen, and himself announced his intention, with the view of giving his act a greater appearance of being voluntarily resolved upon.
Soon after midday he set out, accompanied by the queen, his brother the Count de Provence, his sister the Princess Elizabeth, and his children. It was a strange and shameful retinue that escorted the King of France to his capital. One party of the rioters, with Maillard and another ruffian named Jourdan, the chief of the Coupe-tetes, at their head, had started two hours before, bearing aloft in triumph the heads of the mangled Body-guards, and combining such hideous mockery with their barbarity that they halted at Sevres to compel a barber to dress the hair on the lifeless skulls. And now the royal carriage was surrounded by a vast and confused medley; market-women and the rest of the female rabble, with drunken gangs of the ruffians who had stormed the palace in the morning, still brandishing their weapons, or bearing loaves of bread on their pike-heads, and singing out that they should all have enough of bread now, since they were bringing the baker, the bakeress, and the baker's boy to Paris.[7] The only part of the procession that bore even a decent appearance was a small escort of 'different regiments-the Guards, the National Guards, and the Body-guards; many of the latter still bleeding from the wounds which they had
