but what was casually thrown over her by the women who assisted her in her flight; while one well acquainted with the palace is said to have been seen busily engaged in encouraging the regicides who thus sought her for midnight murder.  The faithful guards who defended the entrance to the room of the intended victim of these desperadoes took shelter in the room itself upon her leaving it, and were alike threatened with instant death by the grenadier assassins for having defeated them in their fiend-like purpose; they were, however, saved by the generous interposition and courage of two gentlemen, who, offering themselves as victims in their place, thus brought about a temporary accommodation between the regular troops and the national guard.

“All this time General La Fayette never once appeared.  It is presumed that he himself had been deceived as to the horrid designs of the mob, and did not choose to show himself, finding it impossible to check the impetuosity of the horde he had himself brought to action, in concurring to countenance their first movements from Paris.  Posterity will decide how far he was justified in pledging himself for the safety of the Royal Family, while he was heading a riotous mob, whose atrocities were guaranteed from punishment or check by the sanction of his presence and the faith reposed in his assurance.  Was he ignorant, or did he only pretend to be so, of the incalculable mischief inevitable from giving power and a reliance on impunity to such an unreasoning mass?  By any military operation, as commander-in-chief, he might have turned the tide.  And why did he not avail himself of that authority with which he had been invested by the National Assembly, as the delegates of the nation, for the general safety and guardianship of the people? for the people, of whom he was the avowed protector, were themselves in peril:  it was only the humanity (or rather, in such a crisis, the imbecility) of Louis XVI. that prevented them from being fired on; and they would inevitably have been sacrificed, and that through the want of policy in their leader, had not this mistaken mercy of the King prevented his guards from offering resistance to the murderers of his brave defenders!

“The cry of ‘Queen!  Queen!’ now resounded from the lips of the cannibals stained with the blood of her faithful guards.  She appeared, shielded by filial affection, between her two innocent children, the threatened orphans!  But the sight of so much innocence and heroic courage paralysed the hands uplifted for their massacre!

“A tiger voice cried out, ‘No children!’ The infants were hurried away from the maternal side, only to witness the author of their being offering up herself, eagerly and instantly, to the sacrifice, an ardent and delighted victim to the hoped-for preservation of those, perhaps, orphans, dearer to her far than life!  Her resignation and firm step in facing the savage cry that was thundering against her, disarmed the ferocious beasts that were hungering and roaring for their prey!