"All know the frightful story of the day after this. Albert's anxiety for us makes him brave every danger, and he comes to us again. The first person he sees at our door is Jaquemart, in the costume of the most atrocious of bandits; our ladies had not dared to bid him go away, but his appearance made them tremble. 'I did not desire you to come hither, but to stay here,' he said; 'why have I not been obeyed?' 'Why do you speak so--was this house particularly menaced?' 'I know nothing of that--at such a moment one should fear everything.'" "We heard groans, weeping, all Paris had not been at _the massacre_. It was late. They pressed Albert to stay, but he would not. He promised, however, to come back next morning.----That day he was obliged to stay at home till about three o'clock, arranging and burning papers. He then came out to visit us, and found himself in the midst of crowds of men, drunken and bloody; many were naked to the waist, their breasts covered with blood. They carried fragments of clothing on their pikes and sabres--their faces were inflamed, their eyes haggard, the whole scene hideous. These groups became more and more frequent and numerous as he advanced. In mortal anxiety for us, he determined to push through everything, and, urging his horse to its speed, reached at length the front of the Hôtel Beaumarchais. There he was stopped by an immense crowd--always the same figures naked and bloodstained, but here their looks were those of enraged fiends. They shout, they scream, they sing, they dance--the saturnalia of hell. On seeing Albert's cabriolet, they redoubled their cries--'An aristocrat! give it him, give it him!' In a moment the cabriolet is surrounded, and from the midst of the crowd an object rises and moves towards him. His agitation perplexes his view--he perceives long fair tresses dabbled with blood--a countenance beautiful even yet. It approaches--it is thrust upon his face; he recognises the features--it is the head of Madame de Lamballe!" "The servant whips the horse with all the strength of his arm. The generous animal, with the instinctive horror of his race for dead bodies, springs with redoubled speed from the spectacle of horror. The frightful trophy, and the cannibals that bore it, had been overturned in the mud--screams and imprecations pursued Albert, stretched senseless at the bottom of the cabriolet. The servant had kept the reins, and whipped the more fiercely, because he could perceive, from the motion of the carriage, that some one had got up behind it, and hoped that the rapidity of its progress would shake him off."