The visit of the king had no influence in diminishing the horrors of the scenes now hourly enacted in the French capital. His friends were openly massacred in the streets, hung up at the lamp-posts, and roasted at slow fires, while their dying agonies were but the subjects of derision. The contagion of crime and cruelty spread to every other city in the empire. The higher nobility and the more wealthy citizens began very generally to abandon their homes, seeing no escape from these dangers but by precipitate flight to foreign lands. Such was the state of affairs, when the officers of some of the regiments assembled at Versailles for the protection of the king had a public banquet in the saloon of the opera. All the rank and elegance which had ventured yet to linger around the court graced the feast with their presence in the surrounding boxes. In the midst of their festivities, their chivalrous enthusiasm was excited in behalf of the king and queen. They drank their health--they vowed to defend them even unto death. Wine had given fervor to their loyalty. The ladies showered upon them bouquets, waved their handkerchiefs, and tossed to them white cockades, the emblem of Bourbon power. And now the cry arose, loud, and long, and enthusiastic, for the king and queen to come and show themselves to their defenders. The door suddenly opened, and the king and queen appeared. Enthusiasm immediately rose almost to phrensy. The hall resounded with acclamations, and the king, entirely unmanned by these expressions of attachment, burst into tears. The band struck up the pathetic air, "O Richard! O my king! the world abandons you." There was no longer any bounds to the transport. The officers and the ladies mingled together in a scene of indescribable enthusiasm.