carnations in their button-holes--the members, evidently, of the secret
societies, who had not been warned of what was going to happen, but to
be ready for anything that might happen We had not been able to take any
precautions, beyond dividing the care of watching over the King's person
between my brothers and myself and the aides-de-camp on duty One of us
with an aide-de-camp, was to take it in turn to keep just behind his
horse, with our eye on the troops and the crowd, so as to interpose if
we noticed any suspicious gesture. My turn had come to take the post of
watcher, with General Heymes, aide-de-camp in waiting, on my right. On
my left I had Lieutenant-Colonel Rieussec, commanding the legion of the
National Guard before which we were passing. Close to the Ambigu, not
the present theatre--the neighbourhood of which had been searched--but a
former Ambigu, which had been shut up, opposite the Jardin Turc cafe, we
heard a sort of platoon firing like the discharge of a mitrailleuse, and
raising my eyes at the noise I saw smoke coming from a window which was
half closed by an outside shutter.

I had no time to notice more, and at the moment I did not perceive that
my left-hand neighbour, Colonel Rieussec, was killed, that Heymes'
clothes were riddled with bullets and his nose carried away, nor that my
own horse was wounded. All I saw was my father holding his left arm, and
saying to me over his shoulder, "I'm hit!" And so he was: one bullet
had grazed his forehead, another spent one had given him the blow of
which he complained, and a third had passed through his horse's neck.
But that we only knew afterwards, and it was only afterwards too that we
learnt the instrument of the crime had been an infernal machine. Our
first thought was that the firing would go on, so I struck spurs into my
horse, and seizing my father's by the bridle, while my two brothers
struck it behind with their swords, we led him swiftly through the scene
of immense confusion that ensued--horses riderless, or bearing wounded