The gates were closed. They were prisoners within the walls of
Versailles.

"It was a rainy night," relates a French historian of the Revolution.
"The crowd took shelter where they could; some burst open the gates of
the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and
mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in
number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the
women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and
made an uproar.

"The King's heart was beginning to fail him; he perceived that the Queen
was in peril. However agonizing it was to his conscience to consecrate
the legislative work of philosophy, at ten o'clock in the evening he
signed the Declaration of Rights.

"Mounier was at last able to depart. He hastened to resume his place as
president before the arrival of that vast army from Paris, whose projects
were not yet known. He reentered the hall; but there was no longer any
Assembly; it had broken up; the crowd, ever growing more clamorous and
exacting, had demanded that the prices of bread and meat should be
lowered. Mounier found in his place, in the president's chair, a tall,
fine, well-behaved woman, holding the bell in her hand, who left the
chair with reluctance. He gave orders that they were to try to collect
the deputies again; meanwhile, he announced to the people that the King
had just accepted the constitutional article. The women, crowding about
him, then entreated him to give them copies of them; others said: 'But,
Monsieur President, will this be very advantageous? Will this give bread
to the poor people of Paris?' Others exclaimed: 'We are very hungry. We
have eaten nothing to-day.' Mounier ordered bread to be fetched from the
bakers. Provisions then came in on all sides. They all began eating in
the hall with much clamour."

At midnight Lafayette arrived at the head of twenty thousand men of the
National Guard. To the amazement of the soldiers and onlookers, he dared
to pass unattended through the palace doors to the Bull's Eye. "He
appeared very calm," says Madame de Stael, Necker's observant daughter.
"Nobody ever saw him otherwise." When he had reported his arrival to the
King, Lafayette stationed guards about the palace, and, worn with hours
of marching in the rain and mud, so far forgot his duty to his Sovereign
and his command that he retired to his house in the town of Versailles to