That supple, passionate body The crowd trampled underfoot for me, And mocked it, and stripped it…

That supple, passionate body
The crowd trampled underfoot for me,
And mocked it, and stripped it…
And at the body
I did not
Dare to look…
But I was hacked off from the body,
Flung, scraps
Of inflamed flesh, upon a stone… And the Parisian rabble
Carried me off in the street crush,
Someone drank liquor in a tavern,
Having thrown me on a wet counter.
A coiffeur lifted me from the ground,
Combed my fair curls,
Rouged my cheeks,
And powdered them… And then, all beaten, wounded
By a dirty hand,
Curled as if for a ball, rouged,
I soared on a pike above the crowd
Like a drunken thyrsus…
The bacchanal rushed on.
The people sang in sacred madness…
And it seemed to me I was at a ball at Versailles,
A smooth dance whirls me and bears me along… Like flame the songs droned.
And up the prison's narrow stairs
To the Tower of the Temple, to the Queen's window,
I rose as the people's herald.

Literal translation

The Head of Madame de Lamballe. Maximilian Voloshin