Another weary hour of agitation, tumult, and gathering excitement passed away, and the clock struck three. The hussars were now completely gained over by the people, and were drinking with them "To the Nation."
The municipal authorities, having briefly deliberated, returned to the king with this short but terrible announcement,
"The people, being absolutely opposed to the king continuing his journey, have resolved to dispatch a courier to the National Assembly in order to be informed of its intentions."
M. de Goguelat now went out into the surging crowd to judge if it were possible to fight their way through. Mounting his horse he rode slowly around, when Drouet approached him and said, "You want to carry off the king, but you shall not have him alive."
The carriage was surrounded by a body of the National Guard. Goguelat approached the carriage with a few hussars who still hesitatingly obeyed his orders, when the major in command of the detachment of the National Guard said to him, "One step farther, and I shoot you."
Goguelat spurred his horse on, when a pistol was discharged. Two bullets struck him, and he fell bleeding to the ground. He was, however, able to rise and enter the shop, but the hussars immediately with acclaim avowed themselves the soldiers of the nation. Goguelat had observed also that at the end of the street there were two cannons planted which seemed ready to fire upon them. There was no longer the possibility of escape by force, unless M. de Bouillé should chance to arrive in season with his well-trained dragoons.
As Goguelat, wounded and covered with blood, again entered the presence of the royal family, they presented a heart-rending spectacle. The queen was sitting upon a bench between two boxes of candles, piteously pleading with the grocer's wife to intercede with her husband in their behalf.
"You are a mother, madame," said the queen; "you are a wife; the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children, for my husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom, more than life."
There is an instinct, unreflecting, in the human heart, which says that it would have been noble in the woman to have periled every thing to save the queen. The universal heart does homage to disinterested benevolence, even when it is unthinking and mistaken. But in this case the good woman, with very natural and prosaic common sense, said,