“When I recovered my senses it was late in the day; and I found myself in humble room, with only an old woman for my attendant; but my wounds bandaged, and every appearance of my having fallen into friendly hands.  The conjecture was true.  I was in the house of one of my father’s gardes de chasse, who, having commenced tavern-keeper in the Fauxbourg St Antoine some years back, and being a thriving man, had become a ‘personage’ in his section, and was now a captain in the Federes.  Forced, malgre, to join the march to the Hotel de Ville, he had seen me in the melee, and dragged me from under a heap of killed and wounded.  To his recollection I probably owed my life; for the patriots mingled plunder with their principles, stripped all the fallen, and the pike and dagger finished the career of many of the wounded.  It happened, too, that I could not have fallen into a better spot for information.  My cidevant garde de chasse was loyal to the midriff; but his position as the master of a tavern, made his house a rendezvous of the leading patriots of his section.  Immediately after their victory of the morning, a sort of council was held on what they were to do next; and the room where I lay being separated from their place of meeting only by a slight partition, I could hear every syllable of their speeches, which, indeed, they took no pains to whisper; they clearly thought that Paris was their own.  Lying on my bed, I learned that the attack on the Hotel de Ville was only a part of a grand scheme of operations; that an insurrection was to be organized throughout France; that the king was to be deposed, and a ‘lieutenant of the kingdom’ appointed, until the sovereign people had declared their will; and that the first movement was to be a march of all the Parisian sections to Versailles.  I should have started from my pillow, to spring sabre in hand among the traitors; but I was held down by my wounds, and perhaps still more by the entreaties of my old attendant, who protested against my stirring, as it would be instantly followed by her murder and that of every inmate of the house.  The club now proceeded to enjoy themselves after the labours of the day.  They had a republican carouse.  Their revels were horrible.  They speedily became intoxicated, sang, danced, embraced, fought, and were reconciled again.  Then came the harangues; each orator exceeding his predecessor in blasphemy, till all was execration, cries of vengeance against kings and priests, and roars of massacre.  I there heard the names of men long suspected, but of whom they now spoke openly as the true leaders of the national movement; and of others marked for assassination.  They drank toasts to Death, to Queen Poissarde, and to Goddess Guillotine.  It was a pandemonium.

“A drum at length beat the ‘Alarme’ in the streets; the orgie was at an end, and amid a crash of bottles and glasses, they staggered, as well as their feet could carry them, out of the house.  They were received by the mob with shouts of laughter.  But the column moved forward; to the amount of thousands, as I could judge by their trampling, and the clashing of their arms.  When the sound had died away in the distance, my humble friend entered my room, thanking his stars that ’he had contrived to escape this march.’