Just then Santerre came along, forcing his way with the crowd. He spoke kindly to the queen, repeating the only excuse which could be made for her, "Madame, you are imposed upon." Seeing the red cap upon the head of the dauphin, he, with a sense of delicacy hardly to be expected in so coarse a man, took it and threw it aside, saying, "The child is stifling." He then urged the people to treat the queen with respect.
A young girl stopped before the queen and assailed her with an incessant volley of imprecations.
"Have I ever," said the queen, calmly, "done you any wrong?"
"No," replied the girl, "not me personally; but you are the cause of the misery of the nation."
"You have been told so," answered the queen; "but you are deceived. As the wife of the King of France and mother of the dauphin, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall never see my own country again. I can be happy only in France. I was happy when you loved me."
These words touched the heart of the passionate but not hardened girl, and she began to weep, saying,
"I ask your pardon. It was because I did not know you. I see that you are good."
While these scenes were transpiring in the council-chamber, the cries of the mob were heard at the door of the king's apartment, and blows from a hatchet fell heavily upon the panels. As a panel, driven by a violent blow, fell at the king's feet, he ordered the door to be thrown open. A forest of pikes and bayonets appeared, and the crowd rushed in. The king, with that courage of resignation which never forsook him, stepped forward with dignity to meet the rabble, and said, "Here I am."
His friends immediately threw themselves around him, forming a rampart with their bodies. The mob, who seemed to have no definite object in view, fell back, and the friends of the king placed him in the embrasure of a window, where he could more easily be protected from the pressure. There was a moment's lull, and then came renewed clamor and uproar. Some said that they had a petition which they wished to present to the king. Others shouted, "No veto! No priests! No aristocrats! The camp near Paris."
The king stood upon a bench, and with marvelous serenity gazed upon the unparalleled spectacle. Légendre, the butcher, one of the leaders of the mob, stepped up, and with a firm voice demanded in the name of the people the sanction of the two decrees which the king had vetoed.[329]