the galleries, the general seemed to be struck dumb, and sat as if he had been petrified; suffering the favourable effect that his conduct had at first produced to be so entirely lost, that the Assembly would not have hesitated to decree his impeachment, had they not been restrained by apprehensions arising from the distinguished reception which the national guard and the people of Paris had given their old commander; who, incapable of making an advantageous use of their regard, was reduced to the necessity of moving away from Paris that very night, and going back to the army."

M. Bertrand de Moleville may surely be asked on this occasion, what resource was left for La Fayette but to move away from Paris, if the king and the court, for whom he was hazarding both his fame and his safety, would not honour him with the slightest countenance? Was it to be endured, that they were to be seen neutral and indifferent (at the least), and sitting with folded arms, while he was to be left to rush into a combat in the Assembly and in the streets of Paris, with their furious and murderous enemies, and with the men who had just been assailing the king in his palace, and who evidently only waited for an opportunity to rob him of his crown and take away his life; was this, I repeat, to be endured? Many are the sensations by which the heart of man may be alienated and embittered, but there are few more fitted for the purpose, than to find indifference to services offered, and ingratitude for sacrifices made.

In a subsequent paragraph, M. Bertrand goes on to observe, "that M. La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his embassy; for on the 10th of July," he says, "M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in which he drew a plan (ready, as he said, for execution) to open the way for the king through his enemies, and to establish him in safety either at Compeigne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his constitutional guards, and by his faithful army." All this was to be done constitutionally.

"I transmitted this letter," he continues, "to the king, who, notwithstanding his distrust of La Fayette was considerably abated, could never believe that he had it in his power to accomplish the restoration of the monarchy, like another Monk; and besides, he deemed the plan now proposed but feebly calculated for that purpose. His majesty therefore sent me an obliging but a negative answer, 'That he was sensible of his attachment in proposing to incur so much danger, but that it would be

imprudent to put so many springs in motion at once, and that the best way he could serve the king was to continue to make himself a terror to the factions, by ably performing his duty as a general."

That this was a negative answer there can be no doubt, but how far it was an obliging answer is another question.

It was not very possible for the king, as I have already intimated, to commit himself to the guidance of La Fayette after the instructions he had given to Mallet du Pan; but that there should be no more sympathy expressed by Bertrand de Moleville, by the king, or by the royalists, ever after, with the elevated nature of the principles of La Fayette, or the steadiness of his loyalty, whenever he saw, as he thought, the king in danger, is quite intolerable; and there are no occasions on which the royal party appear to so little advantage, as when it is desirable that they should show some little candour, some common justice, to La Fayette.

With the Constitutionalists, therefore, all alliance was avoided, and every plan that was founded on the supposition of the establishment of their scheme of government was declined. But what a fearful month must this month of July have been to the king and his family, and even to their confidential ministers! They must all have had many secret misgivings on the chance arising from the interference of the foreign powers, seeing themselves, as they did, cooped up and surrounded in the palace of the Tuileries by a violent party, and a giddy, bloody populace, who had already assailed them, and from whom they had, after the most imminent hazard, only just escaped. Their friends were approaching, but their enemies were already upon them,-enemies who had been denounced themselves, and were not likely to want either vigilance, ability, or vindictive feelings. It would evidently be owing to some extraordinary indulgence of fortune (and, as the poor king observed, he was not lucky) if they perished not in the storm. How could they expect any other fate?

"Immediately after the 20th of June," says M. de Campan, "the queen lost all hope but from foreign succours. She wrote to implore her own family and the brothers of the king; and her letters became," she says, "probably more and more pressing, and expressed her fears, from the tardy manner in which the succours seemed to approach. Her majesty read me a letter from the Archduchess Christina, governess of the Low Countries, assuring her, that out of France they were as much alarmed at her situation, and that of the king, as they themselves could be;

but that their safety or their destruction depended on the particular manner in which the succour was brought, and that charged with interests so dear, the coalition must be prudent."

It is surprising to see remarks from the archduchess so reasonable as these, and to think of the denunciations that had been, and were afterwards, issued by the allied powers against the violent party who had the command of the mob of Paris. A power of self-delusion seems to have been exercised by all concerned on this point, this rescue of the royal family, that is quite astonishing.

The 14th of July approached, the day of the federation; the king and queen were to appear there. "Knowing," says M. de Campan, "that the outrage of the 20th of June had meant their assassination, they had no doubt that their death was intended on the 14th, and the queen was advised to get the king to wear a quilted waistcoat, which might resist the first stroke of any poniard by which he might be assaulted, and give his friends time to rally round in his defence."

Now, it appears from M. de Campan, that all this time, while they were depending on the interference of foreign powers, such was the durance in which the king was held, and so vigilant the spies by which he was surrounded, that the difficulty now was, how the king could find an opportunity to try on the waistcoat, without running the immediate risk of being discovered; and M. de Campan tells us, that she wore this waistcoat about her own person three days before the king could, one morning, in the queen's apartment, contrive to put off his own dress and try it on.

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"The queen," she continues, was not yet up; the king pulled me gently aside, as far as he could from the bed, and whispered me to say, 'It is merely to satisfy the queen there that I submit to all this: they will not assassinate me; their plan is changed; they will put an end to me in a different manner.' The queen questioned M. de Campan when the king was gone, and being told what had passed, observed, that the king had long remarked to her, that the proceedings in France were but a copy of the Revolution in England under Charles I., and that he never ceased reading the history of that unfortunate monarch, that he might conduct himself better than Charles had done under similar circumstances. "I begin to fear," said the queen, "that they will bring the king to a trial; me they will assassinate. I am a foreigner; what will become of our poor children?" But no entreaties could prevail upon the queen to

make use of a defence similar to that provided for the king. "If they assassinate me," she said, "so much the better; they will rid me of an existence that is painful."

"During the whole of the month of July," says M. de Campan, "I was never once in bed; I always dreaded some night attack. There was an attempt made on the life of the queen that was never known to the public. It was about one o'clock in the morning, I was alone with the queen, and we heard footsteps in the corridor. I found the groom of the chambers, and a loud struggle ensued. 'What a situation,' said the unhappy princess; outrages by day, and assassins by night!' 'I have the villain,' said the groom of the chambers; I know him well.' 'Let him go,' said the qucen; 'open the door; he came to assassinate me, and to-morrow will be carried in triumph by the Jacobins."" This wretch it seems, was a young man about the person of the king, and had stolen the key of the corridor from his pocket when the king had gone to bed, apparently for no purpose but that which M. de Campan supposes.

"that

"They were constantly telling us," she goes on to say, the Faubourg St. Antoine was on the point of attacking us. This intelligence was brought me about four o'clock one morning, about the close of July. I found upon further inquiry, that we should have an hour's interval at least. There was no need of waking the queen if all the rest of us were awake. I stole into her chamber, and found her fast asleep. We waked the king and M. Elizabeth. The queen, overcome by her sufferings, had, in a very unusual manner, now slept for nine hours. I told the king that I had not disturbed her: he thanked me, observing, 'that as all the palace was awake, she ran no risk; and it is very delightful,' he said, 'to see her get a little repose; her sufferings double mine.' But what was my chagrin," says M. de Campan, "to find the queen reproach me bitterly for not having waked her! It was in vain that I again and again told her that it was but a false alarm, and that she stood in need of every opportunity to recruit her exhausted strength. My strength is not exhausted,' she replied; affliction sustains me: Elizabeth was with the king, and I was all the time sleeping: I who wish to perish by his side! I am his wife, and he must run no danger that I do not share.""

Such are some of the particulars to be found in the account given by M. de Campan. But what scenes of affliction and terror are these: and how light may our censure fall on those who suffer so much!

In a subsequent chapter, M. de Campan proceeds to relate, that on account of the continual alarms from the faubourgs, the queen had to change her bed-room, and that she ordered the window-shutters to be left open, that her sleepless nights might not appear so insupportably long. Once, in the middle of one of these nights, she assured M. de Campan in confidence, that in a month more she should not see that moon, the soft light of which she had been sitting to contemplate, without being disengaged from shackles herself, and without seeing the king set at liberty also. Everything, she said, was going on now for their deliverance, but that the opinions of her most intimate counsellors were dreadfully divided; that some of them were ready to answer for a success the most complete, while others pictured dangers to her, in the meantime, quite insurmountable. She added, that she had got the itinerary of the march of the princes, and of the king of Prussia; that on such a day they were to be at Verdun, on another day at such another place; that Lisle was to be besieged, but that she had been made to feel much alarm on that point, and that she was much disquieted with respect to what might pass in the interval at Paris. "The king wants energy," she said, "not that he wants courage; he has great courage, but it is passive; he has no trust or opinion of himself, all arising from his education; he has a perfect terror of commanding, and nothing he dreads so much as speaking to people collected in a body; he lived a sort of child, and not a happy one, under the eyes of Louis XV. till he was one-and-twenty, and this has made him timid. Situated as we are, a few words well pronounced and addressed to the Parisians, who are devoted to him, would increase the strength of our party an hundredfold; but he will not say them. I could act myself, I could mount on horseback, if it were necessary; but were I to do so, it would only be to furnish fresh arms to the enemies of the king. The cry against the Austrian, against the rule of a woman, would be universal over France, and I should extinguish the consequence of the king in bringing forward myself in such circumstances. A queen, who is not regent, must remain inactive, and must prepare herself to die."

Such is the melancholy picture of what was passing within the palace; without, nothing was to be witnessed but affronts and outrages, cries directed to the windows, and indecent prints and pamphlets of which the queen was the subject, hawked about and sold within sight and hearing of them. The Assembly and the court were at last obliged to come to a sort of arrangement;