alarmed in view of the lawless violence
which their own acts had awakened, and which was every where desolating
the land. As, on the morning of the 17th of July, the king entered his
carriage with a slender retinue, and with no military protection, to
expose himself to the dangers of his tumultuous capital, this whole
body formed in procession on foot and followed him. A countless throng
of artisans and peasants flocked from all the streets of Versailles,
and poured in from the surrounding country, armed with scythes and
bludgeons, and joined the strange cavalcade. Every moment the multitude
increased, and the road, both before and behind the king, was so clogged
with the accumulating mass, that seven hours passed before the king
arrived at the gates of the city. During all this time he was exposed to
every conceivable insult. As Louis was conducted to the Hotel de Ville,
a hundred thousand armed men lined the way, and he passed along under
the arch of their sabers crossed over his head. The cup of degradation
he was compelled to drain to its dregs.

While the king was absent from Versailles on this dreadful visit,
silence and the deepest gloom pervaded the palace. The queen,
apprehensive that the king would be either massacred or retained a
prisoner in Paris, was overwhelmed with the anguish of suspense. She
retired to her chamber, and, with continually gushing tears, prepared
an appeal to the National Assembly, commencing with these words:
"Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your
sovereign. Do not suffer those who have been united in heaven to be put
asunder on earth." Late in the evening the king returned, to the
inexpressible joy of his household. But the narrative he gave of the
day's adventure plunged them all again into the most profound grief.

The visit of the king had no influence in diminishing the horrors of the
scenes now hourly enacted in the French capital. His friends were openly
massacred in the streets, hung up at the lamp-posts, and roasted at slow
fires, while their dying agonies were but the subjects of derision. The
contagion of crime and cruelty spread to every other city in the empire.
The higher nobility and the more wealthy citizens began very generally
to abandon their homes, seeing no escape from these dangers but by
precipitate flight to foreign lands. Such was the state of affairs,
when the officers of some of the regiments assembled at Versailles for
the prote