ads, the allusions in which, by
means of their gestures, they applied to the Queen. In the paroxysms of
their drunken merriment these women stopped passengers, and pointing to
the carriage, howled in their ears, "Cheer up, friends, we shall no
longer be in want of bread; we bring the baker, the baker's wife, and
the baker's boy."

They pointed to waggons which followed, full of corn and flour, which
had been brought into Versailles, and formed a train, escorted by
Grenadiers and surrounded by women and bullies, some armed with pikes
and some carrying long branches of poplar. This favourite part of the
_cortege_ looked at some distance like a moving grove, amidst which
shone pike-heads and gun-barrels. Above and in front of the motley
procession which accompanied them, mounted high on one of the waggons,
rode Death himself, so the spectators thought, grinning, triumphing, and
directing the whole, in the shape of the skull-like countenance of the
Admiral of the Galley-on-Land.

Behind his Majesty's carriage were the remnant of the Bodyguard, some on
foot and some on horseback, most of them uncovered, all unarmed, and
worn out with hunger and fatigue. The Dragoons, the Flanders regiment,
the Hundred Swiss and the National Guards, preceded, accompanied, or
followed the file of carriages.

Lecour, weak with the night's anxiety and the frightful disappointment
of the day, had scarcely strength to drag himself along between two
Grenadiers, who from time to time supported him, and one of whose great
hairy caps he wore as a token of fraternity. All at once hell seemed to
have risen about him. He heard a united yell from many savage throats,
and saw a ring of red-capped brutes lunging and striking at himself, and
a little woman-fiend sprang at his breast and buried something sharp in
it.

The last thing of which he was conscious was the satanic revengefulness
of her eyes.

CHAPTER XLVIII

SISTERS DEATH AND TRUTH

At a second-story window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St.
Honore--known just then as the Rue Honore, for the saints had been
abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy--a young woman was
sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin,
and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried on with
her work.

For three years the surges of the Revolutionary deluge had succeeded one
another with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last threatened to swallow
th