Louis had been judged on his reputation, and recalling his flight to Varennes, disguised as a serving-man, they had thought that he would hide under a table at the first noise, and might be done to death in the scuffle, like Polonius behind the arras.
Things had happened otherwise; never had the monarch been calmer, never so grand. In the height of the threats and the insults he had not ceased to say: "Behold your king!"
The Royalists were delighted, for, to tell the truth, they had carried the day.
[CHAPTER VI.]
"THE COUNTRY IS IN DANGER!"
The king wrote to the Assembly to complain of the violation of his residence, and he issued a proclamation to "his people." So it appeared there were two peoples—the king's, and those he complained of.
On the twenty-fourth, the king and queen were cheered by the National Guards, whom they were reviewing, and on this same day, the Paris Directory suspended Mayor Petion, who had told the king to his face that the city was not riotous.
Whence sprung such audacity?
Three days after, the murder was out.
Lafayette came to beard the Assembly in its House, taunted by a member, who had said, when he wrote to encourage the king in his opposition and to daunt the representatives: