“Some took to the left, toward the Queen’s apartment, others to the right, toward the chapel stairs, nearer the King’s apartment.  On the left, a Parisian running unarmed, among the foremost, met one of the body guard, who stabbed him with a knife.  The guardsman was killed.  On the right, the foremost was a militia-man of the guard of Versailles, a diminutive locksmith, with sunken eyes, almost bald, and his hands chapped by the heat of the forge.  This man and another, without answering the guard, who had come down a few steps and was speaking to him on the stairs, strove to pull him down by his belt, and hand him over to the crowd rushing behind.  The guards pulled him towards them; but two of them were killed.  They all fled along the Grand Gallery, as far as the Oeil-de-boeuf (Bull’s Eye), between the apartments of the King and the Queen.  Other guards were already there.

“The most furious attack had been made in the direction of the Queen’s apartment.  The sister of her femme de chambre, Madame de Campan, having half opened the door, saw a guardsman covered with blood, trying to stop the furious rabble.  She quickly bolted that door and the next, put a petticoat on the Queen, and tried to lead her to the King.  An awful moment!  The door was bolted on the other side!  They knock again and again.  The King was not within; he had gone round by another passage to reach the Queen.  At that moment a pistol was fired, and then a gun close to them.  ‘My friends, my dear friends,’ cried the Queen, bursting into tears, ‘save me and my children!’ At length the door was opened, and she rushed into the King’s apartment.

“The crowd was knocking louder and louder to enter the Oeil-de-boeuf.  The guards barricaded the place, piling up benches, stools, and other pieces of furniture; the lower panel was burst in.  They expected nothing but death; but suddenly the uproar ceased, and a kind clear voice exclaimed:  ‘Open!’ As they did not obey, the same voice repeated:  ’Come, open to us, body-guard; we have not forgotten that you men saved us French Guards at Fontenoy.’

“It was indeed the French Guards, now become National Guards, with the brave and generous Hoche, then a simple sergeant-major—­it was the people, who had come to save the nobility.  They opened, threw themselves into one another’s arms, and wept.

“At that moment, the King, believing the passage forced, and mistaking his saviors for his assassins, opened his door himself, by an impulse of courageous humanity, saying to those without:  ‘Do not hurt my guards.’

“The danger was past, and the crowd dispersed; the thieves alone were unwilling to be inactive.  Wholly engaged in their own business, they were pillaging and moving away the furniture.  The grenadiers turned that rabble out of the castle.

“Lafayette, awakened but too late, then arrived on horseback.  He saw one of the body-guards whom they had taken and dragged near the body of one of those killed by the guards, in order to kill him by way of retaliation.  ‘I have given my word to the King,’ cried Lafayette, ’to save his men.  Cause my word to be respected.’