Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes’ Opera-Repast!  Well for them, that Insurrection has only pikes and axes; no right sieging tools!  It shakes and thunders.  Must they all perish miserably, and Royalty with them?  Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the first inbreak, have been beheaded in the Marble Court:  a sacrifice to Jerome’s manes:  Jourdan with the tile-beard did that duty willingly; and asked, If there were no more?  Another captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl-chauntings:  may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?

And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it cannot kill; louder and louder it thunders at the Oeil-de-Boeuf:  what can now hinder its bursting in?—­On a sudden it ceases; the battering has ceased!  Wild rushing:  the cries grow fainter:  there is silence, or the tramp of regular steps; then a friendly knocking:  “We are the Centre Grenadiers, old Gardes Francaises:  Open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps; we have not forgotten how you saved us at Fontenoy!” (Toulongeon, i. 144.) The door is opened; enter Captain Gondran and the Centre Grenadiers:  there are military embracings; there is sudden deliverance from death into life.

Strange Sons of Adam!  It was to ‘exterminate’ these Gardes-du-Corps that the Centre Grenadiers left home:  and now they have rushed to save them from extermination.  The memory of common peril, of old help, melts the rough heart; bosom is clasped to bosom, not in war.  The King shews himself, one moment, through the door of his Apartment, with:  “Do not hurt my Guards!”—­“Soyons freres, Let us be brothers!” cries Captain Gondran; and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep the Palace clear.

Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for his eyes had not yet closed), arrives; with passionate popular eloquence, with prompt military word of command.  National Guards, suddenly roused, by sound of trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving.  The death-melly ceases:  the first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection is got damped down; it burns now, if unextinguished, yet flameless, as charred coals do, and not inextinguishable.  The King’s Apartments are safe.  Ministers, Officials, and even some loyal National deputies are assembling round their Majesties.  The consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle down gradually, into plan and counsel, better or worse.

But glance now, for a moment, from the royal windows!  A roaring sea of human heads, inundating both Courts; billowing against all passages:  Menadic women; infuriated men, mad with revenge, with love of mischief, love of plunder!  Rascality has slipped its muzzle; and now bays, three-throated, like the Dog of Erebus.  Fourteen Bodyguards are wounded; two massacred, and as we saw, beheaded; Jourdan asking, “Was it worth while to come so far for two?” Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny!  Their fate surely was sad.  Whirled down so suddenly to the abyss; as