"With a silent gesture, and a gentle inclination of her head, the queen took her leave of all present, and returned to her own apartments, which were now guarded by Lafayette's soldiers, and which now conveyed no hint of the scene of horror which had transpired there a few hours before.
Some hours later two cannon were discharged upon the great square before the palace. They announced to the city of Versailles that the king, the queen, and their children, had just left the proud palace- -were then leaving the solitary residence at Versailles—never to return!
From the lofty tower of the church of St. Louis, in which recently the opening of the States-General had been celebrated, the bell was just then striking the first hour after mid-day, when the carriage drove out of the great gate through which the royal family must pass on its way to Paris. A row of other carriages formed the escort of the royal equipage. They were intended for the members of the States-General. For as soon as the journey of the king to Paris was announced, the National Assembly decreed that it regarded itself as inseparably connected with the person of the king, and that it would follow him to Paris. A deputation had instantly repaired to the palace, to communicate this decree to the king, and had been received by Louis with cordial expressions of thanks.
Marie Antoinette, however, had received the tidings of these resolves of the National Assembly with, a suspicious smile, and an angry flash darted into her eyes.
"And so, the gentlemen of the Third Estate have gained their point!" cried she, in wrath. "They alone have produced this revolt, in order that the National Assembly may have a pretext for going to Paris. Now, they have reached their goal! Yet do not tell me that the revolution is ended here. On the contrary, the hydra will now put forth all its heads, and will tear us in pieces. But, very well! I would rather be torn to pieces by them than bend before them!"
And, with a lofty air and calm bearing, Marie Antoinette entered the great coach in which the royal family was to make the journey to Paris. Near her sat the king, between them the dauphin. Opposite to them, on the broad, front seat, were their daughter Therese, the Princess Elizabeth, and Madame de Tourzel, governess of the royal children. Behind them, in a procession, whose end could not be seen, followed an artillery train; then the mob, armed with pikes, and other weapons-men covered with blood and dust, women with dishevelled hair and torn garments, the most of them drunken with wine, exhausted by watching during the night, shouting and yelling, and singing low songs, or mocking the royal family with scornful words. Behind these wild masses came two hundred gardes du corps without weapons, hats, and shoulder-straps, every one escorted by two grenadiers, and they were followed by some soldiers of the Swiss guard and the Flanders regiment. In the midst of this train rattled loaded cannon, each one accompanied by two soldiers. But still more fearful than the retinue of the royal equipage were the heralds who preceded it—heralds consisting of the most daring and defiant of these men and women, impatiently longing for the moment when they could announce to the city of Paris that the revolution in Versailles had humiliated the king, and given the people victory. They carried with them the bloody tokens of this victory, the heads of Varicourt and Deshuttes, the faithful Swiss guards, who had died in the service of their king. They had hoisted both these heads upon pikes, which two men of the mob carried before the procession. Between them strode, with proud, triumphant mien, a gigantic figure, with long, black beard, with naked blood-flecked arms, with flashing eyes, his face and hands wet with the blood with which he had imbued himself, and in his right hand a slaughter-knife which still dripped blood. This was Jourdan, who, from his cutting off the heads of both the Swiss guards, had won the name of the executioner—a name which he understood how to keep during the whole revolution.[Footnote: Jourdan, the executioner, had, until that time, been a model in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.]
Like storm-birds, desirous to be the first to announce to Paris the triumph of the populace, and impatient of the slow progress of the royal train, these heralds of victory, bearing their bloody banner, hastened on in advance of the procession to Paris. In Sevres they made a halt—not to rest, or wait for the oncoming train—but to have the hair of the two heads dressed by friseurs, in order, as Jourdan announced with fiendish laughter to the yelling mob, that they might make their entrance into the city as fine gentlemen.
While before them and behind them these awful cries, loud singing and laughing resounded, within the carriage that conveyed the royal family there was unbroken silence. The king sat leaning back in the corner, with his eyes closed, in order not to see the horrid forms which from time to time approached the window of the carriage, to stare in with curious looks, or with mocking laughter and equivoques, to heap misery on the unfortunate family.
The queen, however, sat erect, with proud, dignified bearing, courageously looking the horrors of the day in the face, and not a quiver of the eyelids, nor a sigh, betraying the pain that tortured her soul.
"No, better die than grant to this triumphing rabble the pleasure of seeing what I suffer! Better sink with exhaustion than complain."