The wretched object of this attention began to be aware of it, began to understand that the abuse and execrations that were flung after them were chiefly directed against her, began to grasp the meaning of the finger-pointing, the shouting. She _was_ going to her death, and these people were hounding her to it with delight and ferocity. A convulsion shook her and a light foam frothed on her lips while her eyes turned in her head; she gave a shriek so sharp and ghastly that the men beside her covered their ears; she would have fallen had not the wooden rails of the cart held her up. This new spectacle of abandoned terror brought the mob rushing after the cart with fresh imprecations of hate and contempt towards the woman who had spent the revenues of France in wanton luxury while such as themselves sweated and starved. But she was ignorant of her offence towards them; and now the conviction of the truth was borne blazingly into her brain, filled only with one desire–to save her life. She stretched her hands out over the back of the cart. “I am no aristocrat!” she cried. “I am a woman of the people! Save me; do not let them take me! I do not want to die!” Such taunts of vile and horrible abuse answered her that she drew back with her fingers to her lips. “No, no!” she shrieked. “I never wronged any one of you!” The surging crowd now almost blocked the progress of the cart; the soldiers who were conducting it had to make a way with their bayonets. Stones and garbage were hurled at her; dirt splashed on her dress; the jerking of the cart shook her hair down; she continually lost her balance and fell against the wooden side. “Madame, for God’s sake—” said the man next her. “You demean us all.” She put her hands over her face; these others might well be brave, she thought; they were dying for all they believed in, for the sake of what they were, but she had nothing to die for. All she had, all she had ever had, was her beauty, and death would take that from her–and what was left? Death presented itself to her as an intolerable blackness; she could not, she would not face it. She would resist. They could not be such fiends as to _drag_ her to her death. She clenched her hands. She heard the words they were throwing at her; a sense of rage nerved her against them. She hated them, especially the women. She lifted her head, and her blue eyes had a hot brilliance like madness. “I am not a wicked woman!” she cried out fiercely, looking over the sea of haggard, angry faces. “What I did any of you women here would have done had it been offered to you as it was offered to me!” Such of the women who could hear these words replied by a rush of fury that nearly upset the cart, and tried to pull the speaker down among them; the soldiers drove them back, and one man struck Madame du Barry with the flat of his sword and violently bade her be silent.