CHAPTER XXIV.
[1] A letter of Madame Roland dated the 26th of this very month, July, 1789, declares that the people "are undone if the National Assembly does not proceed seriously and regularly to the trial of the illustrious heads [the king and queen], or if some generous Decius does not risk his life to take theirs."
[2] This story reached even distant province. On the 24th of July Arthur Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the table-d'hôte "That the queen had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all Paris." A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues. A deputy had written it; they had seen the letter. And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that "the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d'Artois, to set fire to Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine."—ARTHUR YOUNG'S Travels, etc., in France, pp. 143, 151.
[3] "Car dès ce moment on menaçait Versailles d'une incursion de gens armés de Paris."—MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.
[4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.
[5] She meant to say, "Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains l'épouse et la famille de votre souverain. Ne souffrez pas que l'on désunisse sur la terre ce qui a été uni dans le ciel."—MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.
[6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views: "Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant à Ste. Hélène le traitait avec plus de mépris [que Madame de Staël]. 'La Fayette était encore un autre niais. Il était nullement taillé pour le rôle qu'il avait à jouer…. C'était un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borné, caractère dissimulé, dominé par des idées vagues de liberté mal digérées chez lui; mal conçues.'"—Biographie Universelle.
[7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manières qui ne se plièrent jamais aux grâces de la Cour," p. 7.
[8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.
[9] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans" (by Madame de Tourzel's daughter), p. 30.
[10] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 240.