Then arrived a second army from town. The other was composed of women and came for bread; this one came for vengeance and was composed of friends. The leaders were Marat, a hideous, long-legged hunchbacked dwarf named Verriere, who came to the surface from the mud when society was stirred, and the Duke of Aiguillon, disguised as a fishfog.
They came like camp-followers after a battle to fire and pillage.
There had been plenty of killing to do at the Bastile but no plunder, and they reckoned to make up for that at Versailles.
At half-past five in the morning, five or six hundred of this riff-raff forced or scaled the great gate: a sentinel had fired an alarm shot, which slew one of the assailants.
Divided as by a giant swordstroke, the plunderers broke into two gangs, one aiming at the royal plate; the other at the crown jewels. One stormed the Queen's apartments, the other made for the chapel where the King's were.
The sea rose like a high tide.
The guards of the King at that hour were the regular sentry watching at the door, and an officer who rushed out of the ante-chamber with a halberd snatched from the hands of the frightened Swiss porter.
"Who goes there?" challenged the sentinel three times, while leveling his carbine.
The officer knew what excitement would result from firearms being shot off there in the private apartments, so he beat up the gun with his halberd and barred the stairs with it clear across as he faced the intruders.
"What do you want?" he challenged them.