oaves, borne on
pikes, and dipped in blood, formed others of their standards. Huge
placards, with the words, 'Down with the tyrant! Down with the priests!
Down with the nobles!' waved above the heads of the multitude. 'Make way
for the baker, his wife, and the little apprentice,' was shouted, with
every addition of obloquy and insolence; and in this agony we were
forced to drag on our weary steps till midnight. One abomination more
was to signalize the inhuman spirit of the time. Within about a league
of Paris, the royal equipages were ordered to halt; and for what
inconceivable purpose? It was, that the bleeding heads of our
unfortunate comrades might be dressed and powdered by the village
barber--to render them fit to enter Paris. The heads were then brought
to the carriage windows, for the approval of the royal prisoners; and
the huge procession moved onward with all its old bellowings again.

"We entered the city by torchlight, amid the firing of cannon; the
streets were all illuminated, and the mob and the multitude maddened
with brandy. Yet the scene was unlike that of the night before. There
was something in the extravagances of Versailles wholly different from
the sullen and frowning aspect of Paris. The one had the look of a
melodrame; the other the look of an execution. All was funereal. We
marched with the king to the Place du Carrousel, and when the gates of
the palace closed on him, I felt as if they were the gates of the tomb.
Perhaps it would be best that they were; that a king of France should
never suffer such another day; that he should never look on the face of
man again. He had drained the cup of agony; he had tasted all the
bitterness of death; human nature could not sustain such another day;
and, loyal as I was, I wished that the descendant of so many kings
should rather die by the hand of nature than by the hand of traitors and
villains; or should rather mingle his ashes with the last flame of the
Tuileries, than glut the thirst of rebellion with his blood on the
scaffold."

The story left us all melancholy for a while; bright eyes again
overflowed, as well they might; and stately bosoms heaved with evident
emotion. Yet, after all, the night was wound up with a capital cotillon,
danced with as much grace, and as much gaiety too, as if it had been in
the Salle d'Opera.

* * * * *

I rose early next morning, and felt the spirit-stirring power of the sea
breeze. In