La Fayette removed the degrading consignes, which made the Tuileries a jail to the royal family. The king ceased to be the hostage of the nation, in order to become its ostensible head. He gave some days to the apparent examination which he was supposed to bestow upon the Constitution. On the 13th he addressed to the Assembly, by the minister of justice, a message concerted with Barnave, thus conceived:—"I have examined the constitutional act. I accept it, and will have it carried into execution. I ought to make known the motives of my resolution. From the commencement of my reign I have desired the reform of abuses, and in all my acts I have taken for rule public opinion. I have conceived the project of assuring the happiness of the people on permanent bases, and of subjecting my own authority to settled rules. From these intentions I have never varied. I have favoured the establishment of trials of your work before it was even finished. I have done so in all sincerity; and, if the disorders which have attended almost every epoch of the Revolution have frequently affected my heart, I hoped that the law would resume its force, and that on reaching the term of your labours, every day would restore to it that respect, without which the people can have no liberty, and a king no happiness. I have long entertained that hope; and my resolution has only changed at the moment when I could hope no longer. Remember the moment when I quitted Paris: disorder was at its height—the licence of the press and the insolence of parties knew no bounds. Then, I avow, if you had offered to me the constitution, I should not have thought it my duty to accept it.
"All has changed. You have manifested the desire to re-establish order; you have revised many of the articles; the will of the people is no longer doubtful to me, and therefore I accept the constitution under better auspices. I freely renounce the co-operation I had claimed in this work, and I declare that when I have renounced it no other but myself has any right to claim it. Unquestionably I still see certain points in the constitution in which more perfection might be attained; but I agree to allow experience to be the judge. When I shall have fairly and loyally put in action the powers of government confided to me no reproach can be addressed to me, and the nation will make itself known by the means which the constitution has reserved to it. (Applause.) Let those who are restrained by the fear of persecutions and troubles out of their country return to it in safety. In order to extinguish hatreds let us consent to a mutual forgetfulness of the past. (The tribunes and the left renewed their acclamations.) Let the accusations and the prosecutions which have sprung solely from the events of the constitution be obliterated in a general reconciliation. I do not refer to those which have been caused by an attachment to me. Can you see any guilt in them? As to those who from excess, in which I can see personal insult, have drawn on themselves the visitation of the laws, I prove with respect to them that I am the king of all the French. I will swear to the constitution in the very place where it was drawn up, and I will present myself to-morrow at noon to the National Assembly."
The Assembly adopted unanimously, on the proposition of La Fayette, the general amnesty demanded by the king. A numerous deputation went to carry to him this resolution. The queen was present. "My wife and children, who are here," said the king to the deputation, "share my sentiments." The queen, who desired to reconcile herself to public opinion, advanced, and said, "Here are my children; we all agree to participate in the sentiments of the king." These words reported to the Assembly, prepared all hearts for the pardon which royalty was about to implore. Next day the king went to the Assembly; he wore no decoration but the cross of Saint Louis, from deference to a recent decree suppressing the other orders of chivalry. He took his place beside the president, the Assembly all standing.
"I come," said the king, "to consecrate solemnly here the acceptance I have given to the constitutional act. I swear to be faithful to the nation and the law, and to employ all the power delegated to me for maintaining the constitution, and carrying its decrees into effect. May this great and memorable epoch be that of the re-establishment of peace, and become the gage of the happiness of the people, and the prosperity of the empire." The unanimous applauses of the chamber, and the tribunes ardent for liberty, but kindly disposed towards the king, demonstrated that the nation entered with enthusiasm into this conquest of the constitution.
"Old abuses," replied the president, "which had for a long time triumphed over the good intentions of the best of kings, oppressed France. The National Assembly has re-established the basis of public prosperity. What it has desired the nation has willed. Your majesty no longer desires in vain the happiness of Frenchmen. The National Assembly has nothing more to wish, now that on this day in its presence you consummate the constitution by accepting it. The attachment of Frenchmen decrees to you the crown, and what assures it to you is the need that so great a nation must always have of an hereditary power. How sublime, sire, will be in the annals of history this regeneration, which gives citizens to France, to Frenchmen a country, to the king a fresh title of greatness and glory, and a new source of happiness!"
The king then withdrew, being accompanied to the Tuileries by the entire Assembly; the procession with difficulty making its way through the immense throng of people which rent the air with acclamations of joy. Military music and repeated salvos of artillery taught France that the nation and the king, the throne and liberty, were reconciled in the constitution, and that after three years of struggles, agitations, and shocks, the day of concord had dawned. These acclamations of the people in Paris spread throughout the empire. France had some days of delirium. The hopes which softened men's hearts, brought back their old feelings for its king. The prince and his family were incessantly called to the windows of their palace to receive the applause of the crowds. They sought to make them feel how sweet is the love of a people.
The proclamation of the constitution on the 18th had the character of a religious fête. The Champ-de-Mars was covered with battalions of the national guard. Bailly, mayor of Paris, the municipal authorities, the department, public functionaries, and all the people betook themselves thither. One hundred and one cannon shots hailed the reading of the constitutional act, made to the nation from the top of the altar of the country. One cry of Vive la Nation! uttered by 300,000 voices, was the acceptation by the people. The citizens embraced, as members of one family. Balloons, bearing patriotic inscriptions, rose in the evening in the Champs Elysées, as if to bear to the skies the testimony of the joy of a regenerated people. Those who went up in them threw out copies of the book of the constitution. The night was splendid with illuminations. Garlands of flames, running from tree to tree, formed, from the Arc de l'Etoile to the Tuileries, a sparkling avenue, crowded with the population of Paris. At intervals, orchestras filled with musicians sounded forth the pealing notes of glory and public joy. M. de La Fayette rode on horseback at the head of his staff. His presence seemed to place the oaths of the people and the king under the guard of the armed citizens. The king, the queen, and their children appeared in their carriage at eleven o'clock in the evening. The immense crowd that surrounded them as if in one popular embrace,—the cries of Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive le Dauphin!—hats flung in the air, the gestures of enthusiasm and respect, made for them a triumph on the very spot over which they had passed two months previously in the midst of the outrages of the multitude, and deep murmuring of the excited populace. The nation seemed desirous of redeeming these threatening days, and to prove to the king how easy it was to appease the people, and how sweet to it was the reign of liberty! The national acceptance of the laws of the Constituent Assembly was the counterproof of its work. It had not the legality, but it had really the value, of an individual acceptance by primary assemblies. It proved that the will of the public mind was satisfied. The nation voted by acclamation, what the wisdom of its Assembly had voted on reflection. Nothing but security was wanting to the public feeling. It seemed as if it desired to intoxicate itself by the delirium of its happiness; and that it compensated, by the very excess of its manifestations of joy, for what it lacked in solidity and duration.
The king sincerely participated in this general joyous feeling. Placed between the recollections of all he had suffered for three years, and the lowering storms he foresaw in the future, he endeavoured to delude himself, and to feel persuaded of his good fortune. He said to himself, that perhaps he had mistaken the popular opinion; and that having at least surrendered himself unconditionally to the mercy of his people—that people would respect in him his own power and his own will: he swore in his honest and good heart fidelity to the constitution and love to the nation he really loved.
The queen herself returned to the palace with more national thoughts: she said to the king, "They are no longer the same people;" and, taking her son in her arms, she presented him to the crowd who thronged the terrace of the chateau, and seemed thus to invest herself in the eyes of the people with the innocence of age and the interest of maternity.
The king gave, some days afterwards, a fête to the people of Paris, and distributed abundant alms to the indigent. He desired that even the miserable should have his day of content, at the commencement of that era of joy, which his reconciliation with his people promised to his reign. The Te Deum was sung in the cathedral of Paris, as on a day of victory, to bless the cradle of the French constitution. On the 30th of September, the king closed the Constituent Assembly. Before he entered the chamber, Bailly, in the name of the municipality; Pastoret, in the name of the departments, congratulated the Assembly on the conclusion of its work:—"Legislators," said Bailly, "you have been armed with the greatest power that men can require. To-morrow you will be nothing. It is not, therefore interest or flattery which praises you—it is your works. We announce to you the benedictions of posterity, which commence for you from to-day!" "Liberty," said Pastoret, "had fled beyond the seas, or taken refuge in the mountains,—you have raised her fallen throne. Despotism had effaced every page of the book of nature; you have re-established the decalogue of freemen!"