The king, the queen, the Duchess of Orleans, and the Duke de Montpensier, with several distinguished friends, were still in the breakfast-room—the Gallery of Diana, in the Tuileries. The mob, their hands filled with the plunder of the Palais Royal, were already entering the Carrousel. Loud shouts announced their triumph to the trembling inmates of the royal palace, and appalled them with fears of the doom which they soon might be called to encounter. Two of the gentlemen, M. Remusat and M. de Hauranne, stepped out into the court-yard of the Tuileries to ascertain the posture of affairs. Speedily they returned, pale, and with features expressive of intense anxiety.
"Sire," said M. Remusat to the king, "it is necessary that your majesty should know the truth! To conceal it at this moment would be to render ourselves implicated in all that may follow. Your feelings of security prove that you are deceived! Three hundred feet from here the dragoons are exchanging their sabres, and the soldiers their muskets with the people!"
"It is impossible!" exclaimed the king, recoiling with astonishment.
"Sire," added an officer, M. de l'Aubospère, who was present, "it is true. I have seen it."
Heroism of the queen.
The queen, re-enacting the heroism of Maria Antoinette on a similar occasion, said to her faint-hearted husband, "Go, show yourself to the discouraged troops, to the wavering National Guard. I will come out on the balcony with my grandchildren and the princesses, and I will see you die worthy of yourself, of your throne, and of your misfortunes."
The king descended the stairs, while the queen and the princesses went upon the balcony. He passed through the court-yard of the Tuileries into the Carrousel. If any shouts were uttered of "Vive le Roi," they were drowned in the cry which seemed to burst from all lips, "Vive la Réforme! à bas les Ministres!"
The insurrection triumphant.
All hope was now gone! The king, in despair, returned to the royal family. The panic was heart-rending—the ladies weeping aloud. The shouts which filled the air announced that the mob was approaching, triumphant, from all directions, while a rattling fire of musketry was heard, ever drawing nearer. Marshal Bugeaud did what he could to arrest the advance of the insurgents, but his troops were sullen, and but feebly responded to any of his orders.
In the midst of this terrible scene, the king took his pen to appoint another ministry, still more radically democratic than Barrot and Hauranne. As he was writing out the list, M. de Girardin entered the apartment. He was editor of the Times newspaper, and one of the most uncompromising Republicans in the city. Approaching the king, he said to him firmly, yet respectfully,