Pitou and Billet, with the Marseillais at the fore, pushed through the vapor into the vestibule. Here they met a wall of bayonets—the Swiss.
The Swiss commenced their retreat, a heroic one, leaving a rank of dead on each step, and the battalion most slowly retiring.
Forty-eight dead were counted that evening on those stairs.
Suddenly the cry rang through the rooms and corridors:
"Order of the king—the Swiss will cease firing."
It was two in the afternoon.
The following had happened in the House to lead to the order proclaimed in the Tuileries; one with the double advantage of lessening the assailants' exasperation and covering the vanquished with honor.
As the doors were closing behind the queen, but still while she could catch a glimpse of the bars, bayonets, and pikes menacing Charny, she had screamed and held her hands out toward the opening; but dragged away by her companions, at the same time by her maternal instinct, she had to enter the Assembly Hall.
There she had the great relief afforded her of seeing her son seated on the speaker's desk; the man who had carried him there waved his red cap triumphantly over the boy's head and shouted gladly:
"I have saved the son of my master—long live the dauphin!"