d and persuaded the King to go back to his own
apartments. As I was told this, and as I was unwilling to be left in
the crowd, I went away about an hour before he did, and rejoined the
Queen: you can imagine with what pleasure I embraced her." In their
perils, therefore, Madame Elisabeth was near both Louis XVI. and Marie
Antoinette.

After having voluntarily exposed herself to all the anguish of the
invasion of the OEil-de-Boeuf, the courageous Princess was with the
Queen in the Council Hall, when the crowd, coming through the State
Bed-chamber, arrived there. The horde marched through it, carrying
their barbarous inscriptions like so many ferocious standards. "One of
these," says Madame {213} Campan in her Memoirs, "represented a gibbet
from which an ugly doll was hanging; below it was written: 'Marie
Antoinette to the lamp-post!' Another was a plank to which a bullock's
heart had been fastened, surrounded by the words: 'Heart of Louis XVI.'
Finally, a third presented a pair of bullock's horns with an indecent
motto." Some royalist grenadiers belonging to the battalion called the
_Filles-Saint-Thomas_, were near the council-table and protected the
Queen. Marie Antoinette was standing, and held her daughter's hand.
The Dauphin sat on the table in front of her. At the moment when the
march began, a woman threw a red cap on this table and cried out that
it must be placed on the Queen's head. M. de Wittenghoff, his hand
trembling with indignation, took the cap and after holding it for a
moment over Marie Antoinette's head, put it back on the table. Then a
cry was raised: "The red cap for the Prince Royal! Tri-colored ribbons
for little Veto!" Ribbons were thrown down beside the Phrygian cap.
Some one shouted: "If you love the nation, set the red cap on your
son's head." The Queen made an affirmative sign, and the revolutionary
coiffure was set on the child's fair head.

What humiliations were these for the unhappy mother! What anguish for
so haughty, so magnanimous a queen! The galley-slave's cap has touched
the head of the daughter of Caesars, and now soils the forehead of her
son! The slang of the {214} fish-markets resounds beneath the
venerable arches of the palace. How bitterly the unfortunate sovereign
expiates her former triumphs! Where are the ovations and the
apotheoses, the carriages of gold and crystal, the solemn entries into
the city in its gala dress, to the sound of bells and trumpets? W