"It is necessary—my duty and my loyalty require it—that I should lay at the feet of the queen the account of the visit which I have paid to Paris. I am praised for sleeping soundly the night before an assault or a naval engagement. I venture to assert that I am not timorous in civil matters, but I must confess to your majesty that I did not close my eyes all night.
"I was told—and, gracious heaven! what would be the consequence if this were circulated among the people—I was told that the king was to be carried off to Metz. La Fayette told me so in a whisper at dinner. I trembled lest a single domestic should overhear him. I observed to him that a word from his lips might become the signal of death. I implore your majesty to grant me an audience some day this week."[226]
Such a secret could not long be kept. It soon began to be openly spoken of in the streets as a suspicion, a rumor. Under pretense of protecting the National Assembly from any violence by the mob from Paris, the king called a regiment to Versailles from Flanders. This was a regiment in whose officers and soldiers he could rely, and which was to aid him in his flight. The troops marched into the city with an imposing array of artillery and infantry, exciting increasing suspicion, and were assembled as a guard around the palace.
It was on the 23d of September that this Flanders regiment entered Versailles, and were stationed around the regal chateau, thus doubling the body-guard of the king. It was also observed that a very unusual number of officers crowded the streets of Versailles, estimated at from a thousand to twelve hundred.[227] A dinner was given to these officers on the 1st of October, in the hall of the Opera at the palace. No expense was spared to add splendor to the fête, to which all were invited who could probably be led to co-operate with the court. Wine flowed freely, and, deep in the hours of the night, when all heads were delirious, the king and queen, with the young dauphin, entered the banqueting-hall. They were received with almost phrensied acclaim. The boxes of the Opera were thronged with ladies of the court, adding to the enthusiasm. The king, the queen, the dauphin, were toasted with delirious shouts. When some one proposed "the nation," the toast was scornfully rejected. As the royal family made the tour of the tables, the band struck up the air, "O Richard, O my king, the world is all forsaking thee." The officers leaped upon the chairs and the tables, drew their swords, and vowed eternal fidelity to the king. And now ensued a scene which no language can describe. The officers clambered into the boxes, and received the cordial greetings of the ladies; the revolutionary movement was cursed intensely; the tricolored cockade, the badge of popular rights, was trampled under foot, and the white cockade, the emblem of Bourbon power, was accepted in its stead from the hands of the ladies. The next day there was another similar entertainment in the palace, to which a still larger number of guests were invited, and the convivialities were still more exciting and violent. The courtiers, with that fatuity which ever marked their conduct, were now so encouraged, that they began with insolent menaces to manifest their exultation.
FESTIVAL IN THE BALL-ROOM AT VERSAILLES, OCT. 1, 1789.
The tidings of these fêtes spread rapidly through Versailles and Paris, exciting intense indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning. Despotism was exulting in its anticipated triumph, while the nation was threatened with the loss of its newly-acquired rights. The king had thus far delayed giving his assent to the Constitution. Disquietude pervaded the National Assembly, and confused murmurs filled the thoroughfares of Paris—terrible rumors of the approaching war, of the league with the German princes, of the increasing famine, and the threatened blockade of Paris. "We must bring the king to Paris," all said, "or the court will carry him off, and war will immediately be commenced."
The morning of the 5th of October dawned, dark, cold, and stormy. A dismal rain flooded the streets. There were thousands in Paris that morning who had eaten nothing for thirty hours.[228] The women, in particular, of the humbler class, were in an awful state of destitution and misery. The populace of Paris were actually starving. An energetic woman, half delirious with woe, seized a drum, and strode through the streets beating it violently, occasionally shrieking, "Bread! bread!" She soon collected a crowd of women, which rapidly increased from a few hundred to seven or eight thousand. The men gazed with wonder upon this strange apparition, such as earth had, perhaps, never seen before. Like a swelling inundation the living flood rolled through the streets, and soon the cry was heard, "To Versailles!" As by a common instinct, the tumultuous mass rushed along by the side of the Tuileries and through the Elysian Fields toward Versailles. A few of the more fierce and brutal of the women had guns or pistols. Chancing to find a couple of cannon, they seized them, and also horses to drag the ponderous engines, upon which female furies placed themselves astride, singing revolutionary songs.