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now have been sitting in this august Areopagus? Reflect well upon it nothing can stop us; liberty cannot be suspended. If he, the executive power, does not act, there can be no alternative; it must be suspended: if, through respect, we maintain him in his post, it is on condition that he fill it constitutionally; if he does not, he is no longer any thing to the French nation. Are the people to be forced again to the period of the 14th of July; again to take the sword of justice into their own hands, to avenge at a single blow the outraged law, and to punish the guilty and pusillanimous depositaries of that very law? Legislators! we request to continue armed till the constitution be enforced."

Such was the address of these armed petitioners. That the king was in immediate danger was very evident. The harangue was very often interrupted by the plaudits of the galleries, and great part of the côté gauche. The president could only answer in return," that the Assembly would render the plots of conspirators abortive: that they would consign such men to the laws, because the laws alone were empowered to avenge the people, and because it was only in them and by them, that the people could find that constitution and that liberty which they sought; that they called upon them to respect the law and the constituted authorities, and this in the name of the country and liberty."

But this sort of admonition and request was now too late, and at best but a feeble measure; the Assembly had been too long torpid, and culpably so.

You are now to observe the progress of the insurrection. The petitioners and the citizens, male and female, in the first place, filed off before the Assembly, armed with pikes, muskets, axes, cutlasses, spits, knives, bludgeons, &c. &c. preceded by musicians, playing the national air of "ça ira;" the march directed by Santerre.

The detachments of the national guard, that by their intermixture were to have rendered everything, according to Pétion, orderly and secure, were of course lost in the crowd; and this army of patriots of both sexes crossed the hall dancing and shouting, "Vive la liberté !" "Vivent les Sans-culottes !" "Down with the veto!" The symbols which they held aloft were appropriate, and one of them, a calf's heart, inscribed with the words, "the heart of an aristocrat," was so horrid, as at last, on the representation of some of the members of the Assembly, to be withdrawn; but it afterwards appeared at the

Tuileries. These are among the facts of the Revolution, and must not be forgotten; and they are lessons alike, though in different ways, to the supporters of arbitrary power and the lovers of freedom.

Everything had remained quiet in the palace till about three o'clock, when the petitioners were seen coming out of the hall and joining the immense populace, who were waiting for them without. They were observed by the unfortunate king from the window. They immediately swarmed over the garden of the Tuileries and the Square of the Carousel, and moved tumultuously towards the doors and iron gates of the palace, which the king had ordered to be locked; these they shook with violence, calling out loudly to have them opened. The crowd and the vociferations increased; and while a municipal officer from without was endeavouring to reason with the leaders of the mob, and apparently with some success, another municipal officer from within, ordered the iron gate to be opened which led to the terrace in the garden, and the multitude rushed impetuously into the palace, making it echo with the shouts of "Vive la nation!" "Vivent les Sans-culottes !"

These shouts were heard in the Square of the Carousel, on the other side of the Tuileries, and were repeated by thousands of brigands, who immediately forced the gate of the royal court, that they might join their companions whom they saw masters of the palace.

The king was all this time in company with his family, whom he was comforting and encouraging by his own untroubled aspect, while he turned and looked patiently at the storm that was now seen so fast approaching: he had long expected it, and he was prepared to die. Some little time before, he had sunk into a total abandonment, as it were, of his own existence, and had sat motionless and silent even while surrounded by his family; for ten days together he had uttered not a word, except when a word was necessary to carry on the little game of chance with which the Princess Elizabeth endeavoured to amuse him. Mortifications and disappointments following each other in a succession so long and invariably continued, nothing seemed to prosper, and everything appearing out of his control,-circumstances like these at last had produced their effect: he had at last been brought to think, that for him, at least, there was, on the whole, no rational conclusion but despair; and he had turned sickening and disgusted alike from every promise of hope, and every counsel of the wise. Those may blame him who have

not known what misfortune is; what it is, to seem wedded to calamity; what it is, to be apparently under the influence of some malignant planet, that marks us out from our fellow mortals for failure and for ruin; what it is, to feel how little comfort or support on these occasions can be drawn, after the event, from reflecting within ourselves, or from being told by others, how great have been our mistakes, and how evident our want of judgment.

The queen was not unworthy of herself during this particular period of gloom and torpor; she exhibited the virtues of her sex, and was a faithful helpmate to her lost and desponding husband; she threw herself at his feet, she knelt, and she implored; she roused him by describing to him the crisis in which they were placed, the importance of every moment that was passing by them; she terrified him by the pictures she presented to his imagination; she melted him by the expression of her devotion and regard; she remonstrated with him on what was due to his family and to himself, and called upon him, if he was to perish, to perish with dignity and with honour, and not to remain helpless and submissive, without sense of insult or of wrong, till he was strangled or cut down by the refuse of mankind, and his children, his sister, and his wife, scattered dead and dying around him, on the miserable floor of their apartment. Efforts of this kind, the virtuous efforts of his queen and fellow sufferer, could not be without their effect on the unfortunate monarch.

The representations of M. de Campan may be readily received. By exertions of this kind, it seems, on the part of his queen, he was extricated from his lethargy, and restored to a sense of his duties. He had continued to oppose his veto to the two decrees, as he had judged it right to do, and when these armed petitioners, mixed up with the lowest of the populace, from which they were not to be distinguished, were now seen breaking in upon his palace, he was prepared for any event, and was collected and serene. Noise was heard proceeding from the doors of the inside, which were violently attacked: they were beaten in by hatchets and iron crows.

"Keep the queen from following me," said the king to his attendants; and he advanced to meet the assailants. He was now separated from them only by a single room, and at the moment the further doors were broken and fell in. 66 Open those doors before me," said the king; and in rushed men of horrid aspect, with pikes in their hands. At this instant of their

entrance, the king appears to have narrowly escaped from more than one of these ruffians, who thrust at him, but the pike was turned aside by the attendants. The mob was met boldly by Aclogue, one of the few citizens of Paris who, though of the faubourg St. Marceau, had been touched by the virtues and misfortunes of his royal master. "Citizens," said this intrepid man, "here is your king; what do you want with him? Respect this good king." "Vive le Roi!" was the answer mechanically returned by these brigands, so unexpectedly checked and resisted; "Petition and address!" was roared by others; and the king, whose chief care was to keep these furies at a distance from his family, advanced further, under the pretence of showing himself in a larger room, and receiving there the petition he was told of. This perilous, but on the whole, wise resolution, was formed, announced, and executed at the same instant. Time was gained, and something was done and doing, while every moment was a question of life or death, a question of assassination.

The king then, accompanied by the virtuous Aclogue, the Maréchal de Mouchy, M. D'Hervilly, and a few grenadiers of the national guard, with great difficulty, made his way through the crowd, got to the middle window of the large apartment, and availed himself of a chair, which was placed on a step within the recess, and which thus fortunately raised him above, the multitude. Aclogue and those other faithful men, gentlemen and grenadiers, who were ready to share the fate of their sovereign in this hour of his extremity, placed themselves as a rampart between him and the multitude. All was now uncer

tainty, confusion, and terror; but the mob seemed to want leaders, and to be ignorant what they were to do: they were ready for any act of violence, and were loud in their execrations, but appeared without any fixed plan or purpose; a most happy state of ignorance and irresolution at this particular and most dangerous moment of their first eruption.

Incidents now occurred which were honourable to the royal party, and when these are told, as they are by Weber, François Hue, and others, history seems to have nothing more to relate.

The ever-faithful Princess Elizabeth made her way to her brother, but she was obliged to take her place at some little distance, having been hurried away by the crowd (what a scene does this suppose!) into the recess of another window. She was mistaken for the queen, and overwhelmed with execrations;

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those around her were naturally stepping forward to undeceive her assailants; "No, no," said the magnanimous princess, "tell them not my name; let them take me for the queen."

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Cry, 'Vive la nation!'" said some of the banditti to the king, advancing with their pikes towards the window where he was sitting; "cry, Vive la nation!"" "Well," replied the king, "Vive la nation! the nation has no better friend than myself." "No veto," said others; "give us back our ministers. No veto; sanction the two decrees." "This is not a time for making such a demand," replied the king, nor the way in which it should be made." No answer could be more dignified, nor more honourable to the king in every respect. "Put on this red cap," said one of the brigands, pushing through the crowd: the king assented, and quietly placed it on his head. His life was often in the most immediate danger, but he seemed to disconcert his assassins, and to be his own protection, by the tranquil and undaunted look which he continued to maintain. The red cap remained long upon his head, and was forgotten by the king, till it was observed when the mob had retired. It was offensive to those who saw it, and the king declared, that he remembered the incident well, and that he was quite sure that if he had hesitated, the fellow would instantly have plunged the pike into his body.

About the moment of this outrage, a soldier of the national guard, who happened to be near him, could not but remark to him the terror that he must be in. "No, no," said the king, "I am in no terror; I have meant well; I have no fear. Give me your hand: here," said he, putting the soldier's hand upon his heart, "feel here, does it beat as if I was afraid ?” The king was not afraid; for he had turned away from earth, and neither violence nor death could now disturb the "constant mood of his calm thoughts;" like the high priest in the beautiful drama of Racine, he feared God, "and fearing God, he knew no other fear."

It appears (from a letter of Malouet to Mallet du Pan), that he had written the day before to his confessor, on the 19th of June. "Come and see me," he said, "never had I such need of your consolations; I have done with this world now, it is to heaven that I direct my regards: great calamities are announced for to-morrow; I shall not want courage."

Such was his letter; and he did not want courage when the season of his trial came. The calamities gathered round him, the tempest broke upon his devoted head, as he had been told to expect, but he was not cast down; "the rain descended, and the