"Sire, if all the French knew you as I know you, our calamities would soon be at an end. You wish the happiness of France. You have been sacrificing yourself to the nation ever since 1789. Continue to do so, and our troubles will soon cease, the Constitution will be established, the French will return to their natural character, and the remainder of your reign will be happy."
"I expect my death," the king rejoined mournfully, "and I forgive my enemies. I thank you for the sensibility you have shown. You have served me well, and you have my esteem, and you shall have proofs of it if I am ever to see a better day."
The king then rose, and, to conceal his emotion, went hastily to a window. Dumouriez gathered up his papers slowly that he might have time to regain his composure. As he was leaving the room the king again approached him, and in a tremulous tone said "Adieu! may all happiness attend you." They parted, both in tears.[324]
M. Roland, Minister of the Interior, presented a letter to the king, urging him to sanction the decrees, and to adopt a course more in accordance with the spirit of constitutional liberty. This letter has obtained world-wide celebrity. It was written by Madame Roland, the wife of the minister, one of the most extraordinary women of that or any other age. She was, in fact, the soul of the Republican party. The leaders of that party met every evening in her saloon, and her sagacity originated the measures which they adopted. She was a woman of heroic mould, and endowed with wonderful powers of intellect and eloquence. The letter contained a lively exposition of the peril to which the king was exposed by opposing the establishment of constitutional liberty in France. The indignation of the king was aroused by its plain utterance, and he instantly dismissed the Republican minister, Roland, with his associates, Servan and Clavieres. Roland presented to the Assembly the letter which had caused his dismission. It roused the indignation of the Assembly against the king, and fanned Paris into almost a flame of fury. The letter was printed and copies sent to the eighty-three departments, and a vote was passed that the three ministers whom the king had rejected retained the entire confidence of the nation. This was another accusation against the king, which greatly increased his unpopularity.
The vetos of the king and the dismissal of the popular ministers roused a new storm of indignation. Neither the king nor queen could appear at the windows of the palace without exposing themselves to the most atrocious insults of language and gesture from the brutal men who ever thronged the garden.[325]
The king lost all heart, and sank into the most deplorable condition of mental and physical weakness. For ten days he wandered restlessly through his apartments with a bewildered, vacant stare, without uttering a single word even to his wife and children, and scarcely making any reply to questions addressed to him. His sister, Madame Elizabeth, endeavored to interest him in a game of backgammon. He sat listlessly at the board, mechanically throwing the dice, and simply repeating the words which belong to the game.
"The queen," says Madame Campan, "roused him from this state, so fatal at a critical period, when every minute increased the necessity for action, by throwing herself at his feet, urging every idea calculated to excite alarm, and employing every affectionate expression. She represented, also, what he owed to his family, and went so far as to tell him that, if they were doomed to fall, they ought to fall honorably, and not to wait to be both smothered upon the floor of their apartment."[326]
On the 20th of June there was an immense gathering of the populace of Paris, and of delegates from other parts of the kingdom, to celebrate the anniversary of the meeting in the tennis-court, and to present a petition to the king urging him to withdraw his vetos. Deep apprehensions were felt in several quarters respecting the results of the day. Pétion, who was then mayor of the city, did not venture to prohibit the celebration, but adopted the precaution of doubling the guard of the Tuileries.
