When a political idea finds its way into such heads, instead of ennobling them, it becomes degraded there; its only effect is to let loose vices which a remnant of modesty still keeps in subjection, and full play is given to luxurious or ferocious instincts under cover of the public good .-- The passions, moreover, become intensified through their mutual interaction; crowds, clamor, disorder, longings, and fasting, end in a state of frenzy, from which nothing can issue but dizzy madness and rage .-- This frenzy began to show itself on the way.

Already, on setting out, a woman had exclaimed, "We shall bring back the Queen's head on the end of a pike!"[1437] On reaching the Sevres bridge others added, "Let us cut her throat, and make cockades of her entrails!" Rain is falling; they are cold, tired, and hungry, and get nothing to eat but a bit of bread, distributed at a late hour, and with difficulty, on the Place d'Armes.

One of the bands cuts up a slaughtered horse, roasts it, and consumes it half raw, after the manner of savages.

It is not surprising that, under the names of patriotism and "justice," savage ideas spring up in their minds against "members of the National Assembly who are not with the principles of the people," against "the Bishop of Langres, Mounier, and the rest." One man in a ragged old red coat declares that "he must have the head of the Abbe Maury to play nine-pins with." But it is especially against the Queen, who is a woman, and in sight, that the feminine imagination is the most aroused.
"She alone is the cause of the evils we endure....

she must be killed, and quartered." -- Night advances; there are acts of violence, and violence engenders violence.
"How glad I should be," says one man, "if I could only lay my hand on that she-devil, and strike off her head on the first curbstone!" Towards morning, some cry out, "Where is that cursed cat?
We must eat her heart out...