sufferings that in those few days her hair had turned white; and fresh and studied humiliations were yet in store for her. The carriage was not allowed to take the shortest road, but was conducted some miles round, that it might be led in triumph down the Champs Elysees, where a vast mob was waiting to feast their eyes on the spectacle, whose display of sullen ill-will had been bespoken by a notice prohibiting any one from taking off his hat to the king, or uttering a cheer. The National Guard were forbidden to present arms to him; and it seemed as if they interpreted this order as a prohibition also against using them in his defense; for, as the carriage approached the palace, a gang of desperate ruffians, some of whom were recognized as among the most ferocious of the former assailants of Versailles, forced their way through their ranks, pressed up against the carriage, and even mounted on the steps. Barnave and Latour Maubourg, fearing that they intended to break open the doors, placed themselves against them; but they contented themselves with looking in at the window, and uttering sanguinary threats. Marie Antoinette became alarmed-not for herself, but for her children. They had so closed up every avenue of air that those within were nearly stifled, and the youngest, of course, suffered most. She let down a glass, and appealed to those who were crowding round: 'For the love of God,' she exclaimed, 'retire; my children are choking!' 'We will soon choke you,' was the only reply they vouchsafed to her. At last, however, La Fayette came up with an armed escort, and they were driven off; but they still followed the carriage up to the very gate of the palace with yells of insult. And it had a stranger follower still: behind the royal carriage came an open cabriolet, in which sat Drouet, with a laurel crown on his head,[3] as if the chief object of the procession wore to celebrate his triumph over his king.
The mob was even hoping to add to its impressiveness by the slaughter of some immediate victims-not of the king and queen, for they believed them to be destined to public execution; but they were eager to massacre the faithful Body-guards, who had been brought back, bound, on the box of the carriage; and they would undoubtedly have carried out their bloody purpose had not the queen remembered them, and, as she was dismounting, entreated Barnave and La Fayette to protect them. Though during the last three days many things had had their names altered,[4] the Tuileries had been spared. It was still in name a royal palace, but those who now entered it knew it for their prison. The sun was setting, the emblem of the extinction of their royalty, as they ascended the stairs to find such rest as they might, and to ponder in privacy for this one night over their fatal disappointment, and their still more fatal future.
Yet, though their return was full of ignominy and wretchedness, though their home had become a prison, the only exit from which was to be the scaffold, still, if posthumous renown can compensate for miseries endured in this life; if it be worth while to purchase, even by the most terrible and protracted sufferings, an undying, unfading memory of the most admirable virtues-of fidelity, of truth, of patience, of resignation, of disinterestedness, of fortitude, of all the qualities which most ennoble and sanctify the heart-it may be said, now that her agonies have long been terminated, and that she has been long at rest, that it was well for Marie Antoinette that she had failed to reach Montmedy, and that she had thus fallen again, without having to reproach herself in any single particular, into the hands of her enemies. As a prisoner to the basest of mankind, as victim to the most ferocious monsters that have ever disgraced humanity, she has ever commanded, and she will never cease to command, the sympathy and admiration of every generous mind. But the case would have been widely different had Louis and she found the refuge which they sought with the loyal and brave De Bouille. Their arrival in his camp could not have failed to be a signal for civil war; and civil war, under such circumstances as those of France at that time, could have had but one termination-their defeat, dethronement, and expulsion from the country. In a foreign land they might, indeed, have found security, but they would have enjoyed but little happiness. Wherever he may be, the life of a deposed and exiled sovereign must be one of ceaseless mortification. The greatest of the Italian poets has well said that the recollection of former happiness is the bitterest aggravation of present misery; and not only to the fugitive monarch himself, but to those who still preserve their fidelity to him, and to the foreign people to whom he is indebted for his asylum, the recollection of his former greatness will ever be at hand to add still further bitterness to his present humiliation. The most friendly feeling his misfortunes can ever excite is a contemptuous pity, such as noble and proud minds must find it harder to endure than the utmost virulence of hatred and enmity.
From such a fate, at least, Marie Antoinette was saved. During the remainder of her life her failure did indeed condemn her to a protraction of trial and agony such as no other woman has ever endured; but she always prized honor far above life, and it also opened to her an immortality of glory such as no other woman has ever achieved.
CHAPTER XXXII. Marie Antoinette's Feelings on her Return.-She sees Hopes of Improvement.-The 17th of July.-The Assembly inquire into the King's Conduct on leaving Paris.-They resolve that there is no Reason for taking Proceedings.-Excitement in Foreign Countries.-The Assembly proceeds to complete the Constitution.-It declares all the Members Incapable of Election to the New Assembly.-Letters of Marie Antoinette to the Emperor and to Mercy.-The Declaration of Pilnitz.-The King accepts the Constitution.-Insults offered to him at the Festival of the Champ de Mars.-And to the Queen at the Theatre.-The First or Constituent Assembly is dissolved.
It was eminently characteristic of Marie Antoinette that her very first act, the morning after her return, was to write to De Fersen, to inform him that she was safe and well in health; but though she had roused herself for that effort of gratitude and courteous kindness, for some days she seemed stupefied by grief and disappointment, and unable to speak or think for a single moment of any thing but the narrow chance which had crushed her hopes, and changed success, when it had seemed to be secured, into ruin; and, if ever she could for a moment drive the feeling from her mind, her enemies took care to force it back upon her every hour. Before they reached the Tuileries, La Fayette had obtained from the Assembly authority to place guards wherever he might think fit; and no jailer ever took more rigorous precautions for the safe-keeping of the most desperate criminals than this man of noble birth, but most ignoble heart[1], now practiced toward his king and queen. Sentinels were placed along every passage of the palace, and, that they might have their prisoners constantly in sight, the door of every room was kept open day and night. The queen was not allowed even to close her bed-chamber, and a soldier was placed so as at all times to command a sight of the whole room; the only moment that the door was permitted to be shut being a short period each morning while she was dressing.
But after a time she rallied, and even began again to think the future not wholly desperate. She always looked at the most promising side of affairs, and the first shock of the anguish felt at Varennes had scarcely passed away, when, with irrepressible sanguineness, she began to look around her and search for some foundation on which to build fresh hopes. She even thought that she had found it in the divisions which were becoming daily more conspicuous in the Assembly itself. She had yet to learn that at such times violence always overpowers moderation, and that the worse men are, the more certain are they to obtain the upper hand.
The divisions among her enemies were indeed so furious as to justify at one time the expectation that one party would destroy the other. The Jacobins summoned a vast meeting, whose members they fixed beforehand at a hundred thousand citizens, to meet on Sunday, the 17th of July, to petition the Assembly to dethrone the king. On the appointed day, long before the hour fixed for the meeting, a fierce riot took place, the causes and even the circumstances of which have never been clearly ascertained, but which soon became marked with scenes of extraordinary violence. La Fayette, who tried to crush it in the bud, was pelted and fired at. Bailly hung out the red flag, the token of martial law being proclaimed, at the Hotel de Ville, The mob pelted the National Guard. The National Guard, too much exasperated and alarmed to obey La Fayette's order to fire over the people's heads, at one volley shot down a hundred of the rioters. The Jacobin leaders fled in alarm. Robespierre, who had been one of the chief organizers of the tumult, being also one of the basest of cowards, was the most terrified of all, and fled for shelter to his admirer, of congenial spirit, Madame Roland, whose protection he afterward repaid by sending her to the scaffold. The riot was quelled, and the officers of the National Guard urged La Fayette to take advantage of the opportunity, and lead them on to close by force the club of the Jacobins, and another of equal ferocity, known as the Cordeliers[2], lately founded by the fiercest of the Jacobins, Danton, and a butcher named Legendre, who boasted of his ferocity as his only title to interfere in the Government. If he had been honest in his professions of a desire to save the monarchy, La Fayette would have adopted their advice, for it had already become plain to every one that the existence of these clubs was incompatible with the preservation of the kingly authority; but his imbecile love of popularity made him fear to offend even such a body of miscreants as the followers of Danton and Robespierre, and he professed to believe that he had given them a sufficient lesson, and had so convinced them of his power to crush them that they would be grateful to him for sparing them, and learn to act with more moderation in future.
The decision of the Assembly also on the question, of the king's conduct in leaving Paris was not without its
