I will begin with that Twelfth-day morning when we were wakened by
more noise and racket than even Paris could generally produce. There
had been a little tumult about once a week for the last six months,
so we could endure a great deal, but this was plainly a much larger
one. Some of the servants who went out brought word that the Queen
had carried off the King in order to be revenged on Paris, and that
the people, in a rage, were breaking the carriages of her suite to
pieces, plundering the wagons, and beating, if not killing, every one
in them. We were of course mightily troubled for my sister, and
being only two women we could not go out in quest of her, while each
rumour we heard was more terrible than the last. Some even said that
the Louvre had been asked and plundered; but old Sir Andrew Macniven,
who had made his way through the mob like a brave old Scottish
knight, brought us word that he could assure us that our own Queen
was safe in her own apartments, and that there had been no attack on
the palace.
Still he had himself seen carriages plundered and broken to pieces by
the mob, and the gates were closely guarded. Seeing our distress, he
was about to go with Abbe to the Louvre, to learn whether my sister
and her son were there, when one of the servants came up to tell us
that M. Clement Darpent requested to see my mother, having brought us
tidings of Madame la Vicomtesse.
My poor mother never could endure the name of M.
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