In my masquerade visits to the Assembly, I got acquainted with an editor of one of the papers; I think he told me his name was Duplessie.  Being pleased with the liveliness of my remarks on some of the organized disorders, as I termed them, and with some comments I made upon the meanness of certain disgusting speeches on the patriotic gifts, my new acquaintance suffered me to take copies of his own shorthand remarks and reports.  By this means the Queen and the Princess had them before they appeared in print.  M. Duplessie was on other occasions of great service to me, especially as a protector in the mobs, for my man servant and the honest driver were so much occupied in watching the movements of the various faubourg factions, that I was often left entirely unattended.

The horrors of the Tuileries, both by night and day, were now grown appallingly beyond description.  Almost unendurable as they had been before, they were aggravated by the insults of the national guard to every passenger to and from the palace.  I was myself in so much peril, that the Princess thought it necessary to procure a trusty person, of tried courage, to see me through the throngs, with a large bandbox of all sorts of fashionable millinery, as the mode of ingress and egress least liable to excite suspicion.

Thus equipped, and guarded by my cicisbeo, I one day found myself, on entering the Tuileries, in the midst of an immense mob of regular trained rioters, who, seeing me go towards the palace, directed their attention entirely to me.  They took me for some one belonging to the Queen’s milliner, Madame Bertin, who, they said, was fattening upon the public misery, through the Queen’s extravagance.  The poor Queen herself they called by names so opprobious that decency will not suffer me to repeat them.

With a volley of oaths, pressing upon us, they bore us to another part of the garden, for the purpose of compelling us to behold six or eight of the most infamous outcasts, amusing themselves, in a state of exposure, with their accursed hands and arms tinged with blood up to the elbows.  The spot they had chosen for this exhibition of their filthy persons was immediately before the windows of the apartments of the Queen and the ladies of the Court.  Here they paraded up and down, to the great entertainment of a throng of savage rebels, by whom they were applauded and encouraged with shouts of “Bis! bis!” signifying in English,” Again! again!”

The demoniac interest excited by this scene withdrew the attention of those who were enjoying it from me, and gave me the opportunity of escaping unperceived, merely with the loss of my bandbox.  Of that the infuriated mob made themselves masters; and the hats, caps, bonnets, and other articles of female attire, were placed on the parts of their degraded carcases, which, for the honour of human nature, should have been shot.