, or I should
have jumped from the waggon, and taken my chance for escape. All had
evidently come to a full stop, and even that horrible machine, above my
head, had ceased to clank and crush; for what is a spectacle in France
without an audience? The chief headsman, with two or three of his
assistants, true to their post, alone remained--waiting for the return
of the people; yet even they cast many a lingering glance towards the
pageant, whose plumes, flags, and kettledrums, passing across the
entrance of the square, made their patriotism more difficult from minute
to minute. At length the trumpets died away, and, to my renewed
despondency, I saw the crowd again thicken towards me and the few
remaining vehicles, which that day, now sinking into twilight, was to
empty of their victims.

But I was again respited. While I awaited the summons to mount the fatal
steps, a party of dragoons rode into the square, seized every waggon
without a moment's delay, and ordered the whole to be driven out for the
reception of a column of wounded, both French and Austrians; who, having
been brought to the city gates, now waited the means of transport to the
great military hospital at Vincennes.

In this country of expedients, the first suggestion is always the best.
The colonel of dragoons in charge of the column, had applied to the
government for the means of carriage; they referred him to the
municipality, who referred him to the staff of the National Guard; who
referred him to the subprefect; who referred him to his subordinate
functionaries; who knew nothing on the subject; until the colonel,
indignant at the impertinences of office, accidentally heard that the
requisite conveyances were to be seen in front of the Hotel de Ville.
Regarding it as the natural right of the soldier to be first served in
all cases, he sent off a squadron at full speed to make his seizure.
Nothing could be more complete. The affair was settled at once. The
remonstrances of the civil officers against our being thus withdrawn
from their grasp, were answered by bursts of laughter at their
impudence, and blows with the flat of the sabre for their presumption;
for, next to the open reprobation of the army for the civic cruelties,
was their scorn of the civic functionaries. The National Guard made some
feeble display of resistance, but soon showed that they had no wish to
try their bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the
event was, that th