Years after at St Helena Napoleon related the events of the fatal day as he watched them from a furniture shop belonging to Bourrienne’s brother, Fauvelet. “Before I arrived at the Carrousel,” he says, “I had been met in the Rue des Petits Champs by a group of hideous men carrying a head on the end of a pike. Seeing me well dressed, and looking like a gentleman, they came to me to make me cry, ‘_Vive la Nation!_’ which I did without difficulty, as you may believe. The _château_ was attacked by the violent mob. The King had for his defence at least as many troops as the Convention had on Vendémiaire 13th, when they had to fight against a better-disciplined and more formidable enemy.[1] The greater part of the National Guard was on the side of the King--one must do them this justice. When the palace had been fired, and the King had taken refuge in the bosom of the Assembly, I ventured to penetrate into the garden. Never since have any of my battle-fields given me such an idea of death as the mass of the Swiss corpses then presented to me, whether the smallness of the space made the number appear larger, or whether it was because I was to undergo this experience for the first time.... I visited all the _cafés_ in the neighbourhood of the Assembly; everywhere the irritation was extreme, rage was in every heart, it showed itself in all faces, although the people present were not by any means of the lower class, and all these places must have been daily frequented by the same customers, for although I had nothing peculiar in my dress--but perhaps my countenance was more calm--it was easy to see that I excited many looks of hostility and defiance as being unknown and a suspect.” [1] 5th October, 1795.--See _post_, chapter vii. p. 71.