Ferocious vociferations now rose confusedly from this irritated mass.

"_Down with the veto!--the camp of Paris! give us back our patriotic ministers! where is the Austrian woman ?_" Some ringleaders advanced from the ranks every moment to utter louder threats and menaces of death to the king.

Unable to reach him through the hedge of bayonets crossed in front of him, they waved beneath his eyes and over his head hideous flags, with sinister inscriptions, ragged breeches, the guillotine, the bleeding heart, the gibbet.

One of them tried perpetually to reach the king with his lance in his hand; it was the same cut-throat who, two years before, had washed with his own hands in a pail of water the heads of Berthier and Foulon, and, carrying them by the hair to the Quai de la Ferraille, had thrown them amongst the people for symbols of carnage, and incentives to fresh murders.
A fair young man, elegantly dressed, with menacing gesture continually attacked the grenadiers, and cut his fingers with their bayonets in order to move them aside and make a clear passage.

"Sire--Sire!" he shouted, "I summon you in the name of one hundred thousand souls who surround me, to sanction the decree against the priests: that is death!" Other persons in the crowd, although armed with drawn swords, pistols, and pikes, made no violent gestures, and warded off every attempt on the life of the king.