staircases: these cries created
consternation in the terrace of the garden amongst the groups who were
expecting a victim, and thus learnt that his executioners were softened.

XXII.

Whilst the unfortunate prince thus contended alone against a whole
people, the queen, in another apartment, was undergoing the same
outrages and the same torments; more hated than the king, she ran more
risks. Agitated nations require to have their hatreds personified as
well as their love. Marie Antoinette represented in the eyes of the
nation all the corruptions of courts, all the pride of despotism, and
all the infamies of treason. Her beauty, her youthful inclination for
pleasure, tenderness of heart provoked by calumny into excesses, the
blood of the house of Austria, her pride, which she derived from her
nature even more than from her blood, her close connection with the
Comte D'Artois, her intrigues with the emigrants, her presumed
complicity with the coalition, the scandalous or infamous libels
disseminated against her for four years--made this princess the spied
victim of public opinion. The women despised her as a guilty wife, the
patriots detested her as a conspirator, political men feared her as the
counsellor of the king. The name of _Autrichienne_ which the people gave
her, summed up all their alleged wrongs against her. She was the
unpopularity of a throne of which she should have been the grace and
forgiveness.

Marie Antoinette was aware of this hatred of the people to her person.
She knew that her presence beside the king would be a provocation to
assassination. This was the motive that restrained her to remain alone
with her children in the bed-chamber. The king hoped that she was
forgotten, but it was the queen particularly the women of this mob
sought and called for in terms the most offensive for a wife, a woman,
and a queen.

The king was scarcely surrounded by the masses of people in the _OEil
de Boeuf_ than the doors of the sleeping apartment were beset with the
same uproar and violence. But this party was principally composed of
women. Their weaker arms were not so efficient against oaken panels and
stout hinges. They called to their assistance the men who had carried
the piece of ordnance into the _Salle des Gardes_, and they hastened to
them. The queen was standing up, pressing her two children to her bosom,
and listening with mortal anxiety to the vociferations at her door. She
had near her no one but M.