VI. decides to do so. Surrounded by
deputies and National Guards, he passes into the State Bedchamber, and
notwithstanding the throng, he manages to reach a secret door at the
right of the bed, near the chimney, which communicates with his
bedroom. He goes through this little door, and some one closes it
behind him.

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It is not far from eight o'clock in the evening. The peril and
humiliation of Louis XVI. have lasted nearly four hours, and the
unhappy King is not yet at the end of his sufferings, for he does not
know what has become of his wife and children. While these sad scenes
had been enacting in the palace, a furious populace had been in
incessant commotion beneath the windows, in the garden and the
courtyards. People desiring to establish communication between those
down stairs and those above, had been heard to cry: "Have they been
struck down? Are they dead? Throw us down their heads!"

A slender young man, with the profile of a Roman medal, a pale
complexion, and flashing eyes, was looking at all this from the upper
part of the terrace beside the water. Unable to comprehend the
long-suffering of Louis XVI., he said in an indignant tone: "How could
they have allowed this rabble to enter? They should have swept out
four or five hundred of them with cannon, and the rest would have run."
The man who spoke thus, obscure and hidden in the crowd, opposite that
palace where he was to play so great a part, was the "straight-haired
Corsican," the future Emperor Napoleon.

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XX.

MARIE ANTOINETTE ON JUNE TWENTIETH.

Louis XVI. had just entered his bedchamber. The crowd, after leaving
the hall of the OEil-de-Boeuf, had departed through the State
Bedchamber, and the King's Great Cabinet, called also the Council Hall.
On entering this last apartment, an unexpected scene had surprised
them. Behind the large table they saw the Queen, Madame Elisabeth, the
Dauphin, and Madame Royale.

How came the Queen to be there? What had happened? At a quarter of
four, when Louis XVI. had left his room to go into the hall of the
Bull's-Eye and meet the rioters, Marie Antoinette, as we have already
said, made desperate efforts to follow him. M. Aubier, placing himself
before the door of the King's chamber, prevented the Queen from going
out. In vain she cried: "Let me pass; my place is beside the King; I
will join him and perish with him if it must be." M. Aubier, through
devotion, disobeyed her.