and found no one there but some Body Guards, who had taken refuge in it.  The King, unwilling to expose their lives, told them to wait a few minutes, and afterwards sent to desire them to go to the oeil-de-boeuf.  Madame de Tourzel, at that time governess of the children of France, had just taken Madame and the Dauphin to the King’s apartments.  The Queen saw her children again.  The reader must imagine this scene of tenderness and despair.

It is not true that the assassins penetrated to the Queen’s chamber and pierced the bed with their swords.  The fugitive Body Guards were the only persons who entered it; and if the crowd had reached so far they would all have been massacred.  Besides, when the rebels had forced the doors of the antechamber, the footmen and officers on duty, knowing that the Queen was no longer in her apartments, told them so with that air of truth which always carries conviction.  The ferocious horde instantly rushed towards the oeil-de-boeuf, hoping, no doubt, to intercept her on her way.

Many have asserted that they recognised the Duc d’Orleans in a greatcoat and slouched hat, at half-past four in the morning, at the top of the marble staircase, pointing out with his hand the guard-room, which led to the Queen’s apartments.  This fact was deposed to at the Chatelet by several individuals in the course of the inquiry instituted respecting the transactions of the 5th and 6th of October.

[The National Assembly was sitting when information of the march of the Parisians was given to it by one of the deputies who came from Paris.  A certain number of the members were no strangers, to this movement.  It appears that Mirabeau wished to avail himself of it to raise the Duc d’Orleans to the throne.  Mounier, who presided over the National Assembly, rejected the idea with horror.  “My good man,” said Mirabeau to him, “what difference will it make to you to have Louis XVII. for your King instead of Louis XVI.?” (The Duc d’Orleans was baptised Louis.)]

The prudence and honourable feeling of several officers of the Parisian guards, and the judicious conduct of M. de Vaudreuil, lieutenant-general of marine, and of M. de Chevanne, one of the King’s Guards, brought about an understanding between the grenadiers of the National Guard of Paris and the King’s Guard.  The doors of the oeil-de-boeuf were closed, and the antechamber which precedes that room was filled with grenadiers who wanted to get in to massacre the Guards.  M. de Chevanne offered himself to them as a victim if they wished for one, and demanded what they would have.  A report had been spread through their ranks that the Body Guards set them at defiance, and that they all wore black cockades.  M. de Chevanne showed them that he wore, as did the corps, the cockade of their uniform; and promised that the Guards should exchange it for that of the nation.  This was done; they even went so far as to exchange their grenadiers’ caps for the hats of the Body Guards; those who were on guard took off their shoulder-belts; embraces and transports of fraternisation instantly succeeded to the savage eagerness to murder the band which had shown so much fidelity to its sovereign.  The cry was now “Vivent le Roi, la Nation, et les Gardes-du-corps!”