A train of carriages containing a deputation of the members of the Assembly also followed; Mirabeau himself having just earned a motion that the Assembly was inseparable from the king, and that wherever he was there must be the place of meeting for the great council of the nation.

Yet, in spite of the confidence which their presence might have been expected to diffuse among the mob, and in spite of the hopes of coming plenty which the rioters themselves announced, the royal party was not even yet safe from further attacks.

Some ruffians stabbed at the royal carriage as it passed with their pikes, and several shots were fired at it, though fortunately they missed their aim and no one was injured.[8] To the queen the journey was more painful than to any one else.

A few weeks before she had congratulated Mademoiselle de Lamballe on not being a mother--perhaps the bitterest exclamation that grief and anxiety ever wrung from her lips; and now the keenest anxieties of a mother were indeed added to those of a queen.

The procession moved with painful slowness.