triumph, but taking care to be ready with a proper story of my losses.

When I passed the guard-room, I was pitied by the very wretches, who,
perhaps, had already shared in the spoils; and who would have butchered
me, no doubt, into the bargain, could they have penetrated the real
object of my mission. They asked me if I had been paid for the loss I
sustained. I told them I had not, but I was promised that it should be
settled.

"Settled!" said one of the wretches. "Get the money as soon as you can.
Do not trust to promises of its being settled. They will all be settled
themselves soon!"

The next day, on going to the palace, I found the Princesse de Lamballe
in the greatest agitation, from the accounts the Court had just received
of the murder of a man belonging to Arthur Dillon, and of the massacres
at Nantes.

"The horrid prints, pamphlets, and caricatures," cried she, "daily
exhibited under the very windows of the Tuileries, against His Majesty,
the Queen, the Austrian party, and the Coblentz party, the constant
thwarting of every plan, and these last horrors at Nantes, have so
overwhelmed the King that he is nearly become a mere automaton. Daily
and nightly execrations are howled in his ears. Look at our boasted
deliverers! The poor Queen, her children, and all of us belonging to the
palace, are in danger of our lives at merely being seen; while they by
whom we have been so long buoyed up with hope are quarrelling amongst
themselves for the honour and etiquette of precedency, leaving us to the
fury of a race of cannibals, who know no mercy, and will have destroyed
us long before their disputes of etiquette can be settled."