The Queen was saved; the King was saved; the household was saved—at least for the present—but the monarchy was lost.
His Majesty left Versailles at one o'clock. The Queen, the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Monsieur, Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister and Madame de Tourzel, governess of the children of France, were in his Majesty's carriage.
A hundred deputies of the Assembly in their carriages came next. The advance guard, which was formed of a detachment of the brigands, set out two hours earlier. In front of them Hache and Motte danced in triumph, carrying the pallid heads of Des Huttes and de Varicourt aloft on their pikes.
They stopped a moment at Sèvres in front of the shop of an unfortunate hairdresser. They caught hold of the latter and forced him to dress the gory heads; a task which made the poor man a hopeless maniac the same evening.
The bulk of the Paris National Guard followed them closely. The King's carriage was preceded by Wife Gougeon and the fishwomen and a rabble of prostitutes, the vile refuse of their sex, all raving with fury and wine.
Several rode astride upon cannon, boasting in the most horrible songs of the crimes they had committed themselves or seen others commit. Those who were nearest the carriage sang ballads, the allusions in which, by means of their gestures, they applied to the Queen. In the paroxysms of their drunken merriment these women stopped passengers, and pointing to the carriage, howled in their ears, "Cheer up, friends, we shall no longer be in want of bread; we bring the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy."
They pointed to waggons which followed, full of corn and flour, which had been brought into Versailles, and formed a train, escorted by Grenadiers and surrounded by women and bullies, some armed with pikes and some carrying long branches of poplar. This favourite part of the cortège looked at some distance like a moving grove, amidst which shone pike-heads and gun-barrels. Above and in front of the motley procession which accompanied them, mounted high on one of the waggons, rode Death himself, so the spectators thought, grinning, triumphing, and directing the whole, in the shape of the skull-like countenance of the Admiral of the Galley-on-Land.
Behind his Majesty's carriage were the remnant of the Bodyguard, some on foot and some on horseback, most of them uncovered, all unarmed, and worn out with hunger and fatigue. The Dragoons, the Flanders regiment, the Hundred Swiss and the National Guards, preceded, accompanied, or followed the file of carriages.
Lecour, weak with the night's anxiety and the frightful disappointment of the day, had scarcely strength to drag himself along between two Grenadiers, who from time to time supported him, and one of whose great hairy caps he wore as a token of fraternity. All at once hell seemed to have risen about him. He heard a united yell from many savage throats, and saw a ring of red-capped brutes lunging and striking at himself, and a little woman-fiend sprang at his breast and buried something sharp in it.
The last thing of which he was conscious was the satanic revengefulness of her eyes.