On the parade-ground, the monarch alighted, took a place on the left of the Speaker of the House, and with him walked up to the Altar of the Country. The queen had to separate from her lord here to go into the grand stand with her children; she stopped, refusing to go any further until she saw how he got on, and kept her eyes on him.
At the foot of the altar, one of those rushes came which is common to great gatherings. The king disappeared as though submerged.
The queen shrieked, and made as if to rush to him; but he rose into view anew, climbing the steps of the altar.
Among the ordinary symbols figuring in these feasts, such as justice, power, liberty, etc., one glittered mysteriously and dreadfully under black crape, carried by a man clad in black and crowned with cypress. This weird emblem particularly caught the queen's eyes. She was riveted to the spot, and, while encouraged a little by the king's fate, she could not take her gaze from this somber apparition. Making an effort to speak, she gasped, without addressing any one specially:
"Who is that man dressed in mourning?"
"The death's-man," replied a voice which made her shudder.
"And what has he under the veil?" continued she.
"The ax which chopped off the head of King Charles I."
The queen turned round, losing color, for she thought she recognized the voice. She was not mistaken; the speaker was the magician who had shown her the awful future in a glass at Taverney, and warned her at Sèvres and on her return from Varennes—Cagliostro, in fact.