"They are working might and main to get the King into the Netherlands, on the pretext that his cause is that of all the Kings of Europe! You will be brainless enough not to prevent the flight of the royal family. Parisians—senseless people of Paris! I am tired of repeating it to you: Hold fast the King and the Dauphin within our walls; watch them with care; shut up the Queen, her brother-in-law, and her family. The loss of one day may prove fatal to the nation and dig the graves of three million Frenchmen."
Here I, John Lebrenn, begin the extracts from my journal.
CHAPTER III.
AT THE JACOBIN CLUB.
June 21, 1791.—The expected has happened. To-day, early in the morning, the rumor of the flight of Louis XVI and his family spread over Paris.
Victoria and I went out to observe what impression the desertion of the King and Queen would make upon the people. An innumerable multitude covered the garden of the Palais Royal, the place before the City Hall, and the grounds of the Tuileries and the National Assembly. At ten o'clock in the morning the municipal officers fired three cannon as an alarm. The tocsin sounded, the drums of the National Guard rang out the "assembly." The confusion was indescribable.
In the course of our travels we met Monsieur Hubert. It was the first time I had come face to face with him since the day I asked his niece in marriage. In full uniform, the banker was repairing to his Section, where his royalist district battalion, the Daughters of St. Thomas, was assembling. He approached me and cried brusquely:
"Well? The King has gone. But we don't want the Republic, and shall defend the Constitution to the death."
"What Constitution do you pretend to defend?" replied Victoria. "The Constitution recognizes a hereditary King, the King absconds. Circumstances themselves demand the Republic."
Hubert was dumb for a moment. Then he said, "Citizeness! The Assembly will name Lafayette provisionally Protector of the kingdom. For the rest, the Assembly has sent commissioners after the King, and we hope that they will succeed in reaching him before he gains the frontier. The question will be simplified."
At that moment a flux of the crowd tore Victoria and me away, and carried us on towards the palace of the Tuileries. The sentinels at the foot of the great stairway allowed everyone up into the apartments. The thronging visitors were, like ourselves, all under the influence of a mocking curiosity, remembering, as they did, that the monarch who inhabited these sumptuous apartments complained of the insufficiency of his 40,000,000 francs on the civil list, and pretended that he could not procure the necessaries of life. Leaving the palace again, we followed the boulevards back to the St. Antoine suburb. Everywhere were manifested aversion for royalty, contempt for the person of Louis XVI, and hatred for the Austrian, Marie Antoinette.