Some individuals mistake Madame Elisabeth for Marie Antoinette. Her equerry, M. de Saint-Pardoux, throws himself between her and the furious wretches, who cry: "Ah! there is the Austrian woman; we must have the Austrian!" and undeceives them by naming her.--"Why did you not allow them to believe I am the Queen?" says the courageous Princess; "perhaps you might have averted a greater crime." And, putting aside a bayonet which almost touches her breast, "Take care, Monsieur," she says gently, "you might hurt somebody, and I am sure you would be sorry to do that." { 203} The shouts redouble. The confusion becomes terrible. It is with great difficulty that some grenadiers of the National Guard defend the embrasure of the window where Louis XVI. still stands immovable on his bench. Mingled with the crowd there are inoffensive persons, who have come merely out of curiosity, and even honest men who sincerely pity the King. But there are tigers and assassins as well. One of them, armed with a club ending in a sword-blade, tries to thrust it into the King's heart. The grenadiers parry the blow with their bayonets. A market porter struggles long to reach Louis XVI., against whom he brandishes a sabre. Several times the wretched monarch seeks to address the crowd. His voice is lost in the uproar. A municipal official, M. Mouchet, hoisting himself on the shoulders of two persons, demands by voice and gesture a moment's silence for the King and for himself. Vain efforts. The vociferations of the crowd only increase. Here comes a long pole on the end of which is a Phrygian cap, a _bonnet rouge_. The pole is inclined towards M. Mouchet. M. Mouchet takes the cap and presents it to the King, who, to please the crowd, puts it on his head.
Is it possible? That man on a bench, with the ignoble cap of a galley-slave on his head, surrounded by a drunken and tattered rabble who vomit filthy language, that man the King of France and Navarre, the most Christian King, Louis XVI.? Go back to the day of the coronation, June 11, 1775. It is { 204} just seventeen years and nine days ago! Do you remember the Cathedral of Rheims, luminous, glittering; the cardinals, ministers, and marshals of France, the red ribbons, the blue ribbons, the lay peers with their vests of cloth-of-gold, their violet ducal mantles lined with ermine; the clerical peers with cope and cross? Do you remember the King taking Charlemagne's sword in his hand, and then prostrating himself before the altar on a great kneeling-cushion of velvet sown with golden lilies? Do you see him vested by the grand-chamberlain with the tunic, the dalmatica, and the ermine-lined mantle which represent the vestments of a sub-deacon, deacon, and priest, because the King is not merely a sovereign, but a pontiff? Do you see him seizing the royal sceptre, that golden sceptre set with oriental pearls, and carvings representing the great Carlovingian Emperor on a throne adorned with lions and eagles? Do you remember the pealing of the bells, the chords of the organ, the blare of trumpets, the clouds of incense, the birds flying in the nave?