Their voices awoke the queen, who rang the bell for her lady-in-waiting, Madame Thibault. This woman looked out of the window, and told her majesty that the noise arose from a number of women who, having been unable to find shelter during the night, were walking about. This reply satisfied the queen, and Madame Thibault returned to her bed. By this time the grand court was full of the rabble which began to arrive from all sides, and poured through the gates armed with cutlasses, pistols, guns, and pikes, vowing vengeance against the body-guard and the queen. Major d'Aguesseau at once sent guards into the passage opening out of the court of the Princes into the Cour Royale. But, too few to withstand such a mass of people, they were driven back, and a horde of ruffians precipitated themselves into the Cour Royale, uttering horrible threats and cries of rage. One detachment rushed towards the vestibule leading to the apartments of the queen and the princesses; another flung itself upon the sentinel at the gate of the court, disarmed him, threw him down, and stabbed him with their pikes and sabres. The fellow in the costume of a Greek slave--his name was Jourdain, and he was an artist's model--rushed upon the guard, armed with a hatchet, and, jumping on his breast, chopped at his neck till the head came off and rolled among the feet of the by-standers. Whilst this horrible scene was being transacted in the court, the band of ruffians who had run to the vestibule, found the door shut in their faces by the sentinels. They then directed their attack upon the marble staircase, which was defended by Corporal Deschwanden and another Swiss. Foremost among them was a militiaman of the guard of Versailles, a diminutive locksmith, bald-headed, with small sunken eyes, and his hands chapped and begrimed. The rioters assailed the Swiss, and by dint of numbers forced them up several steps. The corporal was disarmed and maltreated. The little locksmith, seeing him deprived of his gun and sword, sprang vindictively at him and struck him in the breast with a long knife he held in his hand; then leaving him, hanging over the balustrade bleeding and faint, he ran up the steps screaming and flourishing his knife, and the crowd poured after him to the landing, where several guards were prepared to defend the door into the hall of the king. One of the guards, Miomandre, descended a few steps, and asked the rabble, 'What, my friends! do you love the king, and seek to disturb him in his palace?' Without answering him, the locksmith seized him by the belt, others caught him by the hair, and they would have flung him down the stairs to the ruffians below, had not his companions rescued him. Too few in number to oppose the crowd, the guard retired into the hall and shut and locked the door. Then the rioters endeavoured to break it open, and succeeded in staving in one of the panels. The soldiers blocked the hole with a wooden chest and kept them out.