And now the universal cry ascends, "To Paris! to Paris!" La Fayette, with the deepest mortification, was compelled to inform the king that he had no force at his disposal sufficient to enable him to resist the demands of the mob. The king, seeing that he was entirely at the mercy of his foes, who were acting without leaders and without plan, as the caprice of each passing moment instigated, said, "You wish, my children, that I should accompany you to Paris. I can not go but on condition that I shall not be separated from my wife and family." To this proposal there was a tumultuous assent. At one o'clock, the king and queen, with their two children, entered the royal carriage to be escorted by the triumphant mob as captives to Paris. Behind them, in a long train, followed the carriages of the king's suite and servants. Then followed twenty-five carriages filled with the members of the National Assembly. After them came the thirty-five thousand troops of the National Guard; and before, behind, and around them all, a hideous concourse of vagabonds, male and female, in uncounted thousands, armed with every conceivable weapon, yelling, blaspheming, and crowding against the carriages so that they surged to and fro like ships in a storm. This motley multitude kept up an incessant discharge of fire-arms loaded with bullets, and the balls often struck the ornaments of the carriages, and the king and queen were often almost suffocated with the smoke of powder. The two body-guard, who had been massacred while so faithfully defending the queen at the door of her chamber, were beheaded, and, their gory heads affixed to pikes, were carried by the windows of the carriage, and pressed upon the view of the wretched captives with every species of insult and derision. La Fayette was powerless. He was borne along resistlessly by this whirlwind of human passions. None were so malignant, so ferocious, so merciless, as the degraded women who mingled with the throng. They bestrode the cannon singing the most indecent and insulting songs. "We shall now have bread," they exclaimed; "for we have with us the baker, and the baker's wife, and the baker's boy." During seven long hours of agony were the royal family exposed to these insults, before the unwieldy mass had urged its slow way to Paris. The darkness of night was settling down around the city as the royal captives were led into the Hotel de Ville. No one seemed then to know what to do, or why the king and queen had been brought from Versailles. The mayor of the city received them there with the external mockery of respect and homage. He had them then conducted to the Tuileries, the gorgeous city palace of the kings of France, now the prison of the royal family. Soldiers were stationed at all the avenues to the palace, ostensibly to preserve the royal family from danger, but, in reality, to guard them from escape.