His instructions were being carried out expeditiously enough. The great gates stood wide, and he passed towards them through a double row of the National Guard. A sharp, scrutinising glance appeared to satisfy him. These were what he wanted—men who could face a mob, unarmed, as coolly as if they were on parade; men who would obey orders without thought or question. They stood, a solid embodiment of law and order, discipline, and decorum. Dangeau took off his tri-coloured sash, borrowed a couple more, knotted them together, suspended them across the unbarred entrance, and, having requisitioned a chair, sat down on it, and awaited the arrival of the mob. He had not long to wait. They came, heralded by a dull, hideous roar: no longer the tiger howl of the unfleshed beast, but the devilish mirth of the same beast, full fed, but not yet sated, and of mood wanton as well as murderous. It would still kill, but with a refinement of cruelty. The pike-thrust was not enough. It would not suffice them to butcher the Queen,—she must first kiss the livid lips of their other victim; she must be stripped, insulted, dragged alive through the Paris streets. In this new mood they had stopped on their way to the Temple, broken into the trembling Clermont’s shop, and forced that skilful barber to dress the Princesse de Lamballe’s exquisite hair and rouge the bloodless cheeks. The hair was piled high, and wreathed with roses; roses bloomed in the dead cheeks, beneath the lifeless violet of the loveliest eyes in France. Only the mouth drooped livid, ghastly, drained of delight. Clermont had done what he could. Even terror could not rob his fingers of their skill, but, as he muttered to himself, with shaking lips, "Am I, le bon Dieu, to make the dead live?" Rouge and rose-wreathed hair made Death more ghastly still, but the mob was satisfied, and tossing him a diamond buckle for his pains, they swung off again, the head before them. It was thus that Dangeau saw them come. For a moment the blood ran thick and turgid through his brain, the next it cleared, and, though his heart beat fast, it was with the greatest appearance of calm that he mounted his improvised rostrum, and held up his hand in a gesture demanding silence. The mob swept on unheeding; nearer, nearer, right on without check or pause, to the fragile ribbon that alone barred their way. Had Dangeau changed colour, had his eye flickered, or that outstretched arm quivered ever so little, they would have been on him—over him, and another massacre would have been written on the stained pages of History.