Scarcely was the breath out of her body, when the murderers cut off her
head. One party of them fixed it, like that of the vilest traitor, on an
immense pole, and bore it in triumph all over Paris; while another
division of the outrageous cannibals were occupied in tearing her clothes
piecemeal from her mangled corpse. The beauty of that form, though
headless, mutilated and reeking with the hot blood of their foul
crime--how shall I describe it?--excited that atrocious excess of lust,
which impelled these hordes of assassins to satiate their demoniac
passions upon the remains of this virtuous angel.

This incredible crime being perpetrated, the wretches fastened ropes
round the body, arms, and legs, and dragged it naked through the streets
of Paris, till no vestige remained by which it could be distinguished as
belonging to the human species; and then left it among the hundreds of
innocent victims of that awful day, who were heaped up to putrefy in one
confused and disgusting mass.

The head was reserved for other purposes of cruelty and horror. It was
first borne to the Temple, beneath the windows of the royal prisoners.
The wretches who were hired daily to insult them in their dens of misery,
by proclaiming all the horrors vomited from the national Vesuvius, were
commissioned to redouble their howls of what had befallen the Princesse
de Lamballe.

[These horrid circumstances I had from the Chevalier Clery, who was the
only attendant allowed to assist Louis XVI. and his unhappy family,
during their last captivity; but who was banished from the Temple as soon
as his royal master was beheaded, and never permitted to return. Clery
told me all this when I met him at Pyrmont, in Germany. He was then in