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!

"Mirabeau, whose immense head and gross figure could not be mistaken, is
said to have been the first among the mob to have sonorously chanted, 'To
Paris!' His myrmidons echoed and re-echoed the cry upon the signal. He
then hastened to the Assembly to contravene any measures the King might
ask in opposition. The riots increasing, the Queen said to His Majesty:

"'Oh, Sire! why am I not animated with the courage of Maria Theresa? Let
me go with my children to the National Assembly, as she did to the
Hungarian Senate, with my Imperial brother, Joseph, in her arms and
Leopold in her womb, when Charles the Seventh of Bavaria had deprived her
of all her German dominions, and she had already written to the Duchesse
de Lorraine to prepare her an asylum, not knowing where she should be
delivered of the precious charge she was then bearing; but I, like the
mother of the Gracchi, like Cornelia, more esteemed for my birth than for
my marriage, am the wife of the King of France, and I see we shall be
murdered in our beds for the want of our own exertions!'

"The King remained as if paralysed and stupefied, and made no answer. The
Princesse Elizabeth then threw herself at the Queen's feet, imploring her