Prepared For Every Diabolical Cruelty

Princess de Lamballe’s head on a pike paraded beneath the windows to show the Queen.

The frenzied monsters, parading beneath the windows of the apartment where the King and Queen were sitting, demanded with threats of the King’s jailers that they should be allowed to show this ghastly relic to the royal inmates. Finding resistance was vain, the mob were permitted to enter the court upon which the windows of the apartments of the king and Queen looked out. One of the guards within, hearing the tumult and perceiving through the window this ghastly sight, endeavored to prevent the King’s approach. But another, with brutal cruelty, directed the attention of [King] Louis to the awful spectacle. The King was afterwards asked if he would recognize the soldier who had conducted himself so savagely. “No,” he replied; “but I should perfectly well remember him who evinced so much feeling.”

But notwithstanding the efforts of the kind-hearted guard to screen the King, the tumult was so great that the Queen in terror asked the reason of this uproar. Whereupon the inhuman guard said to her, with cold-blooded impudence: “They want to keep you from seeing De Lamballe’s head, which has been brought you that you may know how the people avenge themselves upon their tyrants: I advise you to show yourself, if you would not have them come up here.”

At this atrocious threat the Queen fainted, and Madame Elizabeth and her children ran to her assistance. Meanwhile the brutal wretch looked unfeelingly around, with brazen, malicious satisfaction. The King said to him with dignified calmness: “We are prepared for everything, sir; but you might have dispensed with relating this horrible disaster to the Queen.”