[343] "Tronson du Coudrai, who perished in the deserts of Sinamari; Guillaume, the courageous author of the petition of the twenty thousand; Huet de Guerville; Sourdat de Troyes; and Madame Olympe de Gouges.—Lalli de Tolendal, Malouet, and Necker published admirable pleadings for Louis, but the Convention would not allow them to be read."—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 185.
[345] "Je lui dois le même service, lorsque c'est une fonction que bien des gens trouvent dangereuse."—See his letter to the President of the Convention in Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 182.
[346] "The first time M. Malesherbes entered the Temple, the King clasped him in his arms, and exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, 'Ah! is it you, my friend! you see to what the excess of my love for the people has brought me, and the self-denial which induced me to consent to the removal of the troops intended to protect my throne and person, against the designs of a factious assembly: you fear not to endanger your own life to save mine; but all will be useless: they will bring me to the scaffold: no matter; I shall gain my cause, if I leave an unspotted memory behind me."—Hue, Dernières Années de la Vie de Louis XVI., p. 42.
[347] Deséze was born at Bourdeaux in 1750. He accepted no office under Napoleon; but on the restoration of the Bourbons he was appointed First President of the Court of Cassation, and afterwards created a peer of France. He died at Paris in 1828.
[348] Cléry we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty can never be forgotten. Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted a part so honourable, were never for a moment out of his memory.—S.—Cléry died at Hitzing, near Vienna, in 1809. In 1817, Louis XVIII. gave letters of nobility to his daughter.
[349] Cléry, p. 187.
[350] "When the pathetic peroration of M. Deséze was read to the King, the evening before it was to be delivered to the Assembly, 'I have to request of you,' he said, 'to make a painful sacrifice; strike out of your pleading the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges, and show my entire innocence; I will not move their feelings.'"—Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 197.
[351] "The King was conveyed in the mayor's carriage. He evinced, on the way, as much coolness as on former occasions; spoke of Seneca, Livy, and the public hospitals; and addressed himself, in a delicate vein of pleasantry, to one of the municipality, who sat in his carriage with his hat on."—Thiers, tom. iii., p. 277.
[352] Lacretelle, tom. x., p. 199.