“Frenchmen, would you become a pack of assassins?” Whereupon Pétion turned to Latour-Maubourg and remarked with a sneer:
“It appears that our colleague’s mission is not only to protect royalty, but also the clergy!”
After Barnave’s humane action, the Dauphin willingly seated himself again on his knee and talked to him until they reached Bossuet. At eleven o’clock that evening, after his colleagues were asleep, Barnave was summoned to the King’s chamber, where he had a long conference with the royal couple in regard to their situation.
“Evidently,” said the Queen, at the end of it, “we have been deceived as to the real state of public feeling in France.”
They thanked Barnave warmly for his counsel, and it was agreed that he should meet them secretly in the Tuileries. From this time Barnave inwardly swore allegiance to the throne, and kept his vow faithfully to the end.
On the twenty-fifth of June, at seven in the evening, the royal party arrived in Paris and entered the Tuileries, before the gates of which a vast throng had assembled, drunk with wine and fury and with difficulty restrained from violence by the National Guard. M. Hue lifted the little Dauphin from the coach and carried him into his own apartment, where he was soon in bed. The child was restless, however, and his sleep very uneasy. In the morning when he awoke, he said to his tutor, in a voice loud enough to be heard distinctly by the guards stationed in the room:
“Oh, M. Hue, I have had such a horrible dream! I thought there were wolves and tigers and all kinds of wild beasts around me all night long, waiting to tear me to pieces!”
M. Hue merely shrugged his shoulders, and made no reply. The guards looked at each other in astonishment, but no one ventured to reprove the little Prince for his prophetic dream.
Chapter III
In the Temple
The French Revolution pursued its terrible course, and war with Austria was finally added to the internal disorders that distracted the unhappy country. The people, kept in a constant tumult by the false reports and incessant assaults of the bloody Jacobins, hated the King more than ever. Not content with depriving him of his liberty and his throne, and subjecting him to the deepest humiliations, the brutal mob also demanded his life.