Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them!  Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the Grand Staircase, ’descending four steps:’—­to the roaring tornado.  His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally, from the jaws of Destruction; and slam-to their Door.  This also will stand few instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds.  Barricading serves not:  fly fast, ye Bodyguards; rabid Insurrection, like the hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!

The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading; it follows.  Whitherward?  Through hall on hall:  wo, now! towards the Queen’s Suite of Rooms, in the furtherest room of which the Queen is now asleep.  Five sentinels rush through that long Suite; 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.)