Note 375 — Chapter XLII
Reading edition
"I was convinced that all would proceed quietly, when a fierce-looking man, armed, dressed in a way corresponding with his appearance, approached the King's carriage, and with one hand seizing the traces of the eight mules which were harnessed to it, with the other, in which he held a hedgebill, like a sickle, cut with one stroke, the traces of all the mules. The King himself appeared at the window smiling to the multitude, who greeted him with cries of 'Viva Fernando!' At this moment it struck me, that the scene I witnessed was merely a preconcerted trick."—Savary, tom. ii., p. 248.