"This is not the place, neither is this the time," answered the king, firmly, "to grant such a request. I will do all the Constitution requires."
This bold answer seemed to exasperate the crowd, and they shouted, as it were defiantly, "Vive la Nation!"
"Yes," replied the king, heroically, "Vive la Nation! and I am its best friend."
"Prove it, then," cried one of the rabble, thrusting toward him, on the end of a pike, the red cap of the Jacobins.
The king took the cap and placed it upon his head. The mob responded with shouts of applause. The day was oppressively hot, and the king, who was very corpulent, was almost suffocated with the heat and the crowd. A drunken fellow, who had a bottle and a glass, staggered up to the king, and offered him a tumbler of wine, saying, "If you love the people, drink to their health."
Though the king had long been apprehensive of being poisoned, he took the glass and without hesitation drank its contents. Again he was greeted with shouts of applause. Some of the crowd, as they caught sight of Madame Elizabeth, cried out, "There is the Austrian woman!" The unpopularity of the queen excited murmurs and imprecations, and the princess was in great danger of violence. Some of her friends around her endeavored to undeceive the mob.
"Leave them," said the generous and heroic princess, "leave them to think that I am the queen, that she may have time to escape."
The Assembly was immediately informed of the invasion of the palace. The Constitutionalists were indignant. The Jacobins were satisfied, for they wished to see the king and the king's party frightened into obedience. An angry and almost furious altercation ensued in the Assembly. A deputation of twenty-four members was, however, immediately sent to surround the king, and this deputation was renewed every half hour. But the deputies could not force their way through the crowd. Hoisted upon the shoulders of the grenadiers they endeavored in vain to harangue the mob to order. It was half past five o'clock, an hour and a half after the attack upon the Tuileries had commenced, before Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, made his appearance in the presence of the king. He attempted an apology for coming so late, saying,
"I have only just learned the situation of your majesty."
