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