alling before the daggers of
assassins, and the greatest alarm was felt lest the doors should be
driven in by the merciless mob. In this awful hour, the king appeared as
calm, serene, and unconcerned as if he were the spectator of a scene in
which he had no interest. The countenance of the queen exhibited all the
unvanquished firmness of her soul, as with flushed cheek and indignant
eye she looked upon the drama of terror and confusion which was
passing. The young princess wept, and her cheeks were marked with the
furrows which her tears, dried by the heat, had left. The young dauphin
appeared as cool and self-possessed as his father. The rattling fire of
artillery, and the report of musketry at the palace, proclaimed to the
royal family and the affrighted deputies the horrid conflict, or,
rather, massacre which was raging there. Immediately after the king and
queen had left the Tuileries, the mob broke in at every avenue. A few
hundred Swiss soldiers left there remained faithful to the king. The
conflict was short--the massacre awful. The infuriated multitude rushed
through the halls and the apartments of the spacious palace, murdering,
without mercy and without distinction of age or sex, all the friends of
the king whom they encountered. The mutilated bodies were thrown out of
the windows to the mob which filled the garden and the court. The
wretched inmates of the palace fled, pursued in every direction. But
concealment and escape were alike hopeless. Some poor creatures leaped
from the windows and clambered up the marble monuments. The wretches
refrained from firing at them, lest they should injure the statuary, but
pricked them with their bayonets till they compelled them to drop down,
and then murdered them at their feet. A pack of wolves could not have
been more merciless. The populace, now rioting in their resistless
power, with no law and no authority to restrain them, gave loose rein to
vengeance, and, having glutted themselves with blood, proceeded to sack
the palace. Its magnificent furniture, and splendid mirrors, and costly
paintings, were dashed to pieces and thrown from the windows, when the
fragments were eagerly caught by those below and piled up for bonfires.
Drunken wretches staggered through all the most private apartments,
threw themselves, with blood-soaked boots, upon the bed of the queen,
ransacked her drawers, made themselves merry over her notes, and
letters, and the various articles of her toil