This was virtually dethroning the King, and taking him prisoner. And how did the King accept this news? He smiled, and said jocosely, “This is not too constitutional!” He was the only human being that smiled in that place upon that fatal day—he whose heart should have felt the heaviest weight of grief. But the people around the building shouted for the King’s life. The people, however, must not be looked upon harshly. They had not stolen; and though many hundreds had been slain by them, they had lost three thousand six hundred men. The Swiss did not die unavenged. Then the people went back to their work, tired of bloodshed, for a few days. And the royal family were taken to the prison of the Temple, which three of them quitted only for the scaffold. CHAPTER L. THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER. The wretched Queen’s head and eyelids drooped for a moment as she heard the words which dethroned her husband; then, once again, her head was high and defiant. Together with the misfortune of the Austrian Hapsburg, she inherited their pride and courage. From that hour to the moment of her death, her courage never failed her. She appears to have equally forgiven and despised. Events now followed with terrible rapidity. The Prussians entered France and the town of Verdun fell into their power. That humiliation brought about the massacres of September. The town council purposed their capitulation. Then Colonel Beaupaire, the commandant, opposed it; and refusing to sign the capitulation, he blew out his brains at the council. His body was removed, the capitulation signed, the Prussians marched in, and the daughters of the principal inhabitants, strewed flowers before the foreign troops. All of those girls—to be excused, by reason of their youth—were, during the Reign of Terror, sent to the guillotine. Beaupaire’s body was carried away by his men, who marched out of Verdun with all the honors of war, and to it was accorded a state funeral, while the heart was placed in the Pantheon. Every day, Danton was rising into power. Every day, Robespierre was following him, and marking him down with the vigor of a sleuth hound. It was he who organised the September massacres. On the 28th of August, a grave-digger, who knew the plan of certain catacombs, was awakened at six in the morning by a Government agent, and told to prepare this place, within ten days, for receiving a large number of bodies. He was ordered to be silent, on pain of death. On this same day, organised bands of fierce-looking men, springing no one knew whence, patrolled the streets. The gates of Paris were closed, so that no one could escape, though thousands had fled between the day of the King’s first fall and this one, the 28th of August. Every house was visited. Five thousand persons, suspected of leaning towards royalty, were seized during the following night. Every court-house, convent, prison, was overflowing with prisoners.