Mob at Versailles.
The royal family grossly insulted.
The royal family in the Tuileries.
The two body-guard, who had been massacred while so faithfully defending the queen at the door of her chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent and insulting songs. "We shall now have bread," they exclaimed; "for we have with us the baker, and the baker's wife, and the baker's boy." During seven long hours of agony were the royal family exposed to these insults, before the unwieldy mass had urged its slow way to Paris. The darkness of night was settling down around the city as the royal captives were led into the Hotel de Ville. No one seemed then to know what to do, or why the king and queen had been brought from Versailles. The mayor of the city received them there with the external mockery of respect and homage. He had them then conducted to the Tuileries, the gorgeous city palace of the kings of France, now the prison of the royal family. Soldiers were stationed at all the avenues to the palace, ostensibly to preserve the royal family from danger, but, in reality, to guard them from escape.
The queen's self-sacrificing spirit.
Rioting and violence.
The dauphin's question.
A moment before the queen entered her carriage for this march of humiliation, she hastily retired to her private apartment, and, bursting into tears, surrendered herself to the most uncontrollable emotion. Then immediately, as if relieved and strengthened by this flood of tears, she summoned all her energies, and appeared as she had ever appeared, the invincible sovereign. Indeed, through all these dreadful scenes she never seemed to have a thought for herself. It was for her husband and her children alone that she wept and suffered. Through all the long hours of the night succeeding this day of horror, Paris was one boiling caldron of tumult and passion. Rioting and violence filled all its streets, and the clamor of madness and inebriation drove sleep from every pillow. The excitement of the day had been too terrible to allow either the king or the queen to attempt repose. The two children, in utter exhaustion, found a few hours of agitated slumber from the terror with which they had so long been appalled. But in the morning, when the dauphin awoke, being but six or eight years of age, hearing the report of musketry and the turmoil still resounding in the streets, he threw his arms around his mother's neck, and, as he clung trembling to her bosom, exclaimed, "O mother! mother! is to-day yesterday again?" Soon after, his father came into the room. The little prince, to whom sorrow had given a maturity above his years, contemplated his father for a moment with a pensive air, went up to him and said, "Dear father, why are your people, who formerly loved you so well, now, all of a sudden so angry with you? And what have you done to irritate them so much?"
Grand Avenue of the Tuileries.