“There was one misery to come, and it was the worst; the procession to Paris lasted almost twelve hours.  It was like the march of American savages, with their scalps and prisoners, to their wigwams.  The crowd had been largely increased by the national guards of the neighbouring villages, and by thousands flocking from Paris on the intelligence of the rabble victory.  Our escort was useless; we ourselves were prisoners.  Surrounding the carriage of the king, thousands of the most profligate refuse of Paris, men and women, railed and revelled, sang and shouted the most furious insults to their majesties.  And in front of this mass were carried on pikes, as standards, the heads of two of our corps, who had fallen fighting at the door of the queen’s chamber.  Loaves, 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.