He smiled, and said jocosely, “This is not too constitutional!”
He was the only human being that smiled in that place upon that fatal day—he whose heart should have felt the heaviest weight of grief.
But the people around the building shouted for the King’s life.
The people, however, must not be looked upon harshly. They had not stolen; and though many hundreds had been slain by them, they had lost three thousand six hundred men. The Swiss did not die unavenged.
Then the people went back to their work, tired of bloodshed, for a few days.
And the royal family were taken to the prison of the Temple, which three of them quitted only for the scaffold.
CHAPTER L.
THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.
The wretched Queen’s head and eyelids drooped for a moment as she heard the words which dethroned her husband; then, once again, her head was high and defiant. Together with the misfortune of the Austrian Hapsburg, she inherited their pride and courage. From that hour to the moment of her death, her courage never failed her. She appears to have equally forgiven and despised.