A cap of the queen’s was placed on the head of a young girl, but she exclaimed it would sully her forehead, and trampled it under foot with indignation and contempt.  They entered the school-room of the young dauphin—­there the people were touched, and respected the books, the maps, the toys of the baby king.  The streets and public squares were crowded with people; the national guards assembled; the drums beat to arms; the alarm-gun thundered every minute.  Men armed with pikes, and wearing the bonnet rouge, reappeared, and eclipsed the uniforms.  Santerre, the brewer and agitator of the faubourgs, alone led a band of 2000 pikes.  The people’s indignation began to prevail over their terror, and showed itself in satirical outcries and injurious actions against royalty.  On the Place de la Greve, the bust of Louis XVI., placed beneath the fatal lantern, that had been the instrument of the first crimes of the Revolution, was mutilated.  “When,” exclaimed the demagogues, “will the people execute justice for themselves upon all these kings of bronze and marble—­shameful monuments of their slavery and their idolatry?” The statues of the king were torn from the shops; some broke them into pieces, others merely tied a bandage over the eyes, to signify the blindness attributed to the king.  The names of king, queen, Bourbon, were effaced from all the signs.  The Palais Royal lost its name, and was now called Palais d’Orleans.  The clubs, hastily convoked, rang with the most frantic motions; that of the Cordeliers decreed that the National Assembly had devoted France to slavery, by declaring the crown hereditary; they demanded that the name of the king should be for ever abolished, and that the kingdom should be constituted into a republic.  Danton gave it its audacity, and Marat its madness.

The most singular reports were in circulation, and contradicted each other at every moment.  According to one, the king had taken the road to Metz, to another, the royal family had escaped by a drain.  Camille Desmoulins excited the people’s mirth as the most insulting mark of their contempt.  The walls of the Tuileries were placarded with offers of a small reward to any one who would bring back the noxious or unclean animals that had escaped from it.  In the garden, in the open air, the most extravagant proposals were made.  “People,” said one of these orators, mounting on a chair, “it will be unfortunate, should this perfidious king be brought back to us,—­what should we do with him?  He would come to us like Thersites to pour forth those big tears, of which Homer tells us; and we should be moved with pity.  If he returns, I propose that he be exposed for three days to public derision, with the red handkerchief on his head, and that he be then conducted from stage to stage to the frontier, and that he be then kicked out of the kingdom.”

Freron caused his papers to be sold amongst the groups.  “He is gone,” said one of them, “this imbecile king, this perjured monarch.  She is gone, this wretched queen, who, to the lasciviousness of Messalina, unites the insatiable thirst of blood that devoured Medea.  Execrable woman, evil genius of France, thou wast the leader, the soul of this conspiracy.”  The people repeating these words, circulated from street to street these odious accusations, which fomented their hate, and envenomed their alarm.