ABSTRACT
“This poor mystery of a woman, paraded all over Paris, all the way to the Temple… 1 Thus Michelet reminds his readers of the outrage done to the corpse of Mme de Lamballe, whose sex, mutilated and torn out, was carried like a trophy next to her head, heart, and disemboweled body by a joyous procession headed for the prison of the Temple, where the queen, Marie-Antoinette, dear friend of the murdered princess, was incarcerated. Earlier, the historian had told the story of the execution: “They seize her, they want her to take an oath over a heap of corpses. They strike her on the forehead. The blood streams down; it is the signal for the murder, she falls pierced with blows. They tear off everything, her dress, her slip; and naked as God had made her, she is spread out on the corner of a boundary-stone, at the entrance to the Rue Saint-Antoine. They leave her exposed there from eight o'clock in the morning till noon, then they cut away her head and the sacred parts of the body.” 2
