'Bah!' said Foulon; 'you will sting your hands with the nettles.' He was drawn through the door; it was like the vortex of a whirlpool, and in this portal the life was almost crushed out of him by the press. As he was thrust into the open air and sunlight, he looked up at the sky, then cloudless and of the deepest azure. 'Stand back!' said he; and disengaging his arm, he flung his bunch of nettles in the faces of those before him. 'Eat them, you rascals,' he said, and laughed bitterly. His appearance was hailed with repeated thunders of--'To the lantern!' 'Make him ask pardon of the nation,' was shouted. 'Give me space to make my bow,' said Foulon, calm as ever, though a rope was being attached to his neck. 'Ask pardon of the nation!' was repeated. 'I exceedingly regret, great nation of French,' said the old man, bending ironically, and laying his hand on his heart, 'I deplore, with all my heart, that Providence and the stupidity of your king prevented me from having literally made you munch thistles like an ass.' A scream of rage from those around him was the response. Instantly he was seen, high above the people's heads, dangling to the lantern, but only for an instant. The rope broke and he fell. He was again run up, and again the cord gave way. Then his head was hacked off and elevated on a pike. At that same moment the news flew through La Grève that Berthier was entering Paris by the Porte S. Martin, and the crowd, to a man, rushed in that direction. At the Fontaine Maubuée, the two crowds clashed. He who bore the head of Foulon ran forward amidst the cheers of the mob that accompanied Berthier. In the madness of her own excitement, Madame Plomb did not observe him, and he passed her when her head was turned in the opposite direction. Her yellow flag engrossed her attention; it was a streamer a couple of yards long, and as she brandished it the silk twisted itself around the horses, for sometimes she used it as a whip. Every time the mob shouted, she stood up, whirled her flag, and shouted also. The people were unable to make her out, with her long black gown, her ash-grey face, blazing eyes, and saffron turban. They supposed she was masked, and represented the genius of Death, and some applauded her: 'Behold Berthier conducted to judgment by Death.' At the moment that the procession began to move on, a man hastily dressed in a black ox-hide, his face covered with lamp-black, and the horns of the ox on his head, holding a pitchfork, leaped upon the box, and forced the driver to yield his place to him. Instantly vociferous cheers greeted this new adjunct to the spectacle. 'He is driven to destruction by Death and the Devil!' was cried; and the mob danced and screamed around the coach. It was then that he who bore Foulon's head on a pike had the brutality to thrust the ghastly object--the dead mouth of which was filled with hay--into the carriage for Berthier to look at.