with the Tyrant”—­and that comprehensive and peculiarly favourite motto of the mob—­“May the last of the kings be strangled with the entrails of the last of the priests,” were hung from the walls in all quarters; and in the centre of the floor were ranged three pieces of artillery surrounded by their gunners.  I now fully acknowledged the exactness of Mendoza’s information; and began to feel considerable uncertainty about my own fate in the midst of a horde of armed ruffians, who came pouring in more thickly every moment, and seemed continually more ferocious.  At length I was ordered to go forward to a sort of platform at the head of the hall, where some candles were still burning, and the remnants of a supper gave signs that there had been gathered the chief persons of this tremendous assemblage.  A brief interrogatory from one of them armed to the teeth, and with a red cap so low down on his bushy brows as almost wholly to disguise his physiognomy, enquired my name, my business in Paris, and especially what I had to allege against my being shot as a spy in the pay of the Tuileries.  My answers were drowned in the roar of the multitude.  Still, I protested firmly against this summary trial, and at length threatened them with the vengeance of my country.  This might be heroic, but it was injudicious.  Patriotism is a fiery affair, and a circle of pistols and daggers ready prepared for action, and roused by the word to execute popular justice on me, waited but the signal from the platform.  Their leader rose with some solemnity, and taking off his cap, to give the ceremonial a more authentic aspect, declared me to have forfeited the right to live, by acting the part of an espion, and ordered me to be shot in “front of the leading battalion of the army of vengeance.”  The decree was so unexpected, that for the instant I felt absolutely paralyzed.  The sight left my eyes, my ears tingled with strange sounds, and I almost felt as if I had received the shots of the ruffians, who now, incontrollable in their first triumph, were firing their pistols in all directions in the air.  But at the moment, so formidable to my future career, I heard the sound of the clock of Notre Dame.  I felt a sudden return of my powers and recollections, but the hands of my assassins were already upon me.  The sound of the general signal for their march produced a rush of the crowd towards the gate, I took advantage of the confusion, struck down one of my captors, shook off the other, and plunged into the living torrent that was now pouring and struggling before me.

But even when I reached the open air—­and never did I feel its freshness with a stronger sense of revival—­I was still in the midst of the multitude, and any attempt to make my way alone would have obviously been death.  Thus was I carried on along the Boulevarde, in the heart of a column of a hundred thousand maniacs, trampled, driven, bruised by the rabble, and deafened with shouts, yells, and cries of vengeance, until my frame was a fever and my brain scarcely less than a frenzy.