When next I knew myself, I awoke to life with the feeling of a beating red-hot hammer upon my left shoulder; I appeared to be struggling out of a state of fearful horror. When this cleared off and I knew myself to be once more alive, once more Citizen Réné Besson, I was in a little room, which I soon learnt was an apartment belonging to Citizen Duplay; and, at my side, reading a book, was Citizeness Cornelie Duplay, who had constituted herself my nurse. And inasmuch as this history is not so much one of myself as of the Revolution, and of my part in it, I will only briefly recount the events of the next few weeks—of the next few months, in relation to myself. It appeared that I had been wounded in the shoulder, not dangerously; but the loss of blood was very great, and I was weak as a little child. I could not raise my hand even to my head, while I had scarcely voice sufficient with which to thank my kind nurse for the offices she performed about me. For weeks I lay upon that narrow bed, my constitution, and the temperate life I had hitherto led, fighting well in my favor. I could tell through chapters how gradually the memory of Sophie Gerbaut faded from my mind, and of how Cornelie Duplay took her place in my heart. But I said nothing of my love; and when, weak, but quite safe, I sat once more at Citizen Duplay’s hospitable table, I still kept my passion to myself. Released, however, as I was, from my bed, I was still a prisoner in the house, which I did not quit for a couple more months. Meanwhile the Revolution was progressing. The sight of the altar of the country, after the flight of the people from its steps, was terrible. It is said that the great mass of the dead lying bleeding upon that mighty structure was composed of women and children. As the National Guard marched back to the city, after this massacre of many hundreds—a massacre which would have been multiplied by ten, had not Lafayette thrown himself before the cannon—they were greeted with low cries of “Murder!” “Murder!” “Vengeance!” That day utterly parted the people from the thought of royalty. Paris was now ready to spill blood, for massacre would now take the name of vengeance. In many a street in the common parts of Paris were to be found the surviving relatives of those who had been slain. These were naturally prompted by a spirit of revenge—by a determination to pay blood with blood. Nothing could wash out this hate—no words uttered by the weak and vacillating King could now stem the torrent of hate. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were already condemned to death in the hearts of the people. Nothing could save them.