and the
Assembly itself, among the vanquished of the day. Instead of its
bayonets and uniforms one saw nothing in the stations and patrols that
divided Paris but pikes and tatters. "Some one came to tell me,"
relates Madame de Stael, "that all of my friends who had been on guard
outside the palace, had been seized and massacred. I went out at once
to learn the news; the coachman who drove me was stopped at the bridge
by men who silently made signs that they were murdering on the other
side. After two hours of useless efforts to pass I learned that all
those in whom I was interested were still living, but that most of them
had been obliged to hide in order to escape the proscription with which
they were threatened. When I went to see them in the evening, on foot,
and in the mean houses where they had been able to find shelter, I
found armed men lying before the doors, stupid with drink, and only
half waking to utter execrable curses. Several women of the people
were in the same state, and their vociferations were more odious still.
Whenever a patrol intended to maintain order made its appearance, {328}
honest people fled out of its way; for what they called maintaining
order was to contribute to the triumph of assassins and rid them of all
hindrances."

At last the city was going to rest a while after so much emotion! It
was three o'clock in the morning. The Assembly, which had been in
session for twenty-four hours, adjourned. Only a few members remained
in the hall to maintain the permanence proclaimed at the beginning of
the crisis. The inspectors of the hall came for Louis XVI. and his
family, to conduct them, not to the Luxembourg, but to the upper story
of the convent of the Feuillants, above the corridor where the offices
and committees of the Assembly had been established. It was there, in
the cells of the monks, that the royal family were to pass the night.
Then all was silent once more. Royalty was dying!

{329}

XXXII.

THE ROYAL-FAMILY IN THE CONVENT OF THE FEUILLANTS.

What a strange prison was this dilapidated old monastery, these little
cells, not lived in for two years, with their flooring half-destroyed,
and their narrow windows looking down into courts full of men drunken
with wine and blood! By the light of candles stuck into gun-barrels
the royal family entered this gloomy lodging. Trembling for her son,
who was frightened, the Queen took him from M. Aubier's arms and
whisper