“Accompany the king,” replied Marie Antoinette. “Come with me, then,” rejoined the general. He led the queen upon the balcony, from whence she looked upon the multitude, agitated like the ocean in a storm. Proudly she stood, a true daughter of her imperial mother, Maria Theresa, and calmly she gazed upon the mighty throng. The murmurs of the crowd were hushed. At the sight of this fearless woman standing thus exposed to all their fury, those who would have torn in pieces the daughter of the Cæsars were compelled to render homage. Lafayette, bending, took her hand and kissed it, while the marble court resounded with the shouts of “_Vive la reine!_” A little after noon the royal family entered their carriage, and slowly the melancholy _cortège_ set out for Paris. As they passed through the gates of Versailles, the queen glanced backward for a moment upon that splendid palace, the scene of so much happiness and grandeur, which she was to see no more. And the carriage rolled on, bearing its occupants to a dungeon and the scaffold. Adieu to Versailles! Royalty was vanquished; and Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette at the Tuileries were but the captive slaves of their subjects. Months rolled by, months of insult and humiliation, until even the king was aroused, and seriously contemplated flight; that, escaping from the scenes of violence and danger to which he was exposed in Paris, he might draw around him his loyal subjects upon the frontiers of France, and there endeavor amicably to adjust the difficulties which desolated the kingdom. Gabriel Honoré de Mirabeau, the son of thunder, was the mightiest and most terrible product of the Revolution. He was the ugliest man and the grandest orator in chaotic France. He swayed the multitude; and it seemed, as he himself believed, that if he would, he, and he only, might yet save the monarchy.