they are in the Anteroom
knocking loud: "Save the Queen!" Trembling women fall at their feet with
tears; are answered: "Yes, we will die; save ye the Queen!"

Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far through
the outermost door, "Save the Queen!" and the door shut. It is brave
Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across
imminent death to do it; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave
Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down
with pikes; his comrades hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre
and Tardivet: let the names of these two Bodyguards, as the names of
brave men should, live long.

Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse of
Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen; not in robes
of State. She flies for her life, across the Oeil-de-Boeuf; against
the main door of which too Insurrection batters. She is in the King's
Apartment, in the King's arms; she clasps her children amid a faithful
few. The Imperial-hearted bursts into mother's tears: "O my friends,
save me and my children, O mes amis, sauvez moi et mes enfans!"
The battering of Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the
Oeil-de-Boeuf. What an hour!

Yes, Friends: a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to Governed and
Governor; wherein Governed and Governor ignominiously testify that their
relation is at an end. Rage, which had brewed itself in twenty thousand
hearts, for the last four-and-twenty hours, has taken fire: Jerome's
brained corpse lies there as live-coal. It is, as we said, the infinite
Element bursting in: wild-surging through all corridors and conduits.

Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the
Oeil-de-Boeuf. They may die there, at the King's threshhold; they can
do little to defend it. They are heaping tabourets (stools of honour),
benches and all moveables, against the door; at which the axe of
Insurrection thunders.--But did brave Miomandre perish, then, at the
Queen's door? No, he was fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead;
he has nevertheless crawled hither; and shall live, honoured of loyal
France. Remark also, in flat contradiction to much which has been said
and sung, that Insurrection did not burst that door he had defended; but
hurried elsewhither, seeking new bodyguards. (Campan, ii. 75-87.)

Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes' Opera-Repast! Well for them, that
Insurrectio