"I wish it were in my power to help you. But bless me! you are thinking of your husband and I am thinking of mine. Every woman for her own husband."
This speech certainly did not indicate a heroic nature. But it is obvious that M. Sausse had now no power to save the king. Matters had proceeded far beyond his control. If he could by any stratagem have facilitated the flight, his own life would have been the inevitable forfeit. It would have been treason to the nation. Humanity also seemed imperiously to demand that the king should be stopped. His escape would place him at the head of foreign and hostile armies to ravage France with the horrors of war, and to quench the kindling flame of liberty in blood.
The queen, whose energetic mind foresaw the awful future, was overwhelmed and burst into tears. The king had now lost all self-possession, and was bewildered as a child. The people, who began to be apprehensive that the troops of Bouillé might come to the rescue, were crowding the door and shouting, "Back, back to Paris."
The king was urged to show himself, that he might tranquilize the people. He went to a window and looked out upon the excited multitude, over whom a few torches shed a lurid light. The sight of the king at first produced profound silence. The people then, as versatile as children, were so affected by the appearance of the king in his servile dress, and with his woe-worn countenance, that many wept; and while not one word of insult was heard, many cried out, in compassionate tones, Vive le Roi!
The day was then just beginning to dawn. Gradually the sun rose, and shone upon a strange spectacle. The guns, the drums, the alarm-bells had roused the whole country around. Ten thousand men had already assembled in Varennes, choking the narrow street where the grocery stood. From all directions the country people were seen hurrying to the town, as the strange tidings of the attempted flight and arrest were spreading far and wide. As the crowd increased in the streets, and the gloom of night was dispelled by the bright blaze of day, the tumult rose higher and higher. All sympathy for the royal family seemed to give place to a feeling of indignation, that they should be stealing away to lead foreign armies to make war upon the liberties of France.
At seven o'clock the door opened, and the king beheld, to his surprise, an officer of the National Guard of Paris. His dress was disordered, and he was dusty and worn with hurried travel. The man was greatly agitated when he found himself in the presence of the king, and could only stammer, in broken and almost incoherent phrase, the words,
"Sire, all Paris is being murdered; our wives and children are perhaps assassinated; you shall not go any farther; sire, the interests of the state; yes, sire, our wives and our children."
The queen seized the hand of the officer, and, leading him to a humble bed in the corner, where the two royal children, Maria and Louis, utterly exhausted, were sleeping, said to him, as she pointed to the children,
"Am I not a mother also?"[275]
The king, interrupting her, turned abruptly to the officer, and said,