d to
approve the fete of the Swiss of Chateauvieux, for example? How could
they help being indignant when, while on duty at the Tuileries, they
heard the populace insult the royal family under the very windows of
the palace?

When they returned to their barracks at the Military School, they
expressed this indignation too forcibly, and their words, hawked about
in all quarters by ill-will, were represented as the preliminary
symptoms of a reactionary plot. A guard commanded by a Duke de Brissac
was intolerable to the Jacobins. Their sole idea was to drive it from
the Tuileries, where its presence appeared to insure order,--a thing
they held in utmost horror. A 20th of June would not have been
possible with a constitutional guard, and ever since May, the 20th of
June had been in course of preparation. Its organizers had their plan
completely laid already. An adroit rumor was started of a so-called
plot, some Saint-Bartholomew or other, which they pretended was on foot
against the patriots, and of which the Ecole Militaire was the centre.
The white flag, which was to be the signal for the assassins to
assemble, was said to be hidden there. Petion, the mayor of Paris,
{142} under pretext of preventing troubles, sent municipal officers to
make a search. They could not lay their hands on the white flag which
was the pretended object of their visit, but they did find monarchical
hymns and ballads, and counter-revolutionary writings.

An unlucky incident still further increased suspicion. The famous
Countess de La Motte had just published in London some new particulars
concerning the affair of the necklace. In order to avert scandal, the
Queen had caused Laporte, intendant of the civil list, to buy up the
whole edition, and he had burned every copy of it at the manufactory of
Sevres. That very evening the committee of surveillance were in
possession of the fact that Laporte had gone to Sevres with three
unknown persons, and that thirty bales of paper had been put into the
fire in his presence. There was at this time a great deal of talk
concerning a pretended Austrian committee, in which a complete plan of
restoration by foreign aid was being elaborated. It was claimed that
the papers burned at the manufactory were the archives of this
committee, with which popular imagination was extremely busy.
Denunciations fell in showers. Laporte and several others were
summoned before the committee of surveillance. Petion