m.
She demanded, also, what he owed to his family, and went so far as to
say that if they must perish, it ought to be with honor, and without
waiting to be strangled one after another on the floor of their
apartment."

While Louis XVI. assisted unmoved, not merely like Charles V. at his
own obsequies, but at those of royalty, the blood of Maria Theresa was
boiling in the veins of Marie Antoinette. The scenes she had witnessed
sometimes extorted sobs and cries of anguish from her. Her pride
revolted at seeing the royal mantle, crown, and sceptre dragged through
the mire. She wanted to struggle to the last, to hope against all
hope, to cling to the last chances of safety like a shipwrecked sailor
to the fragments of his ship. Who could say? She might find defenders
where she least expected them. It was for this reason that she wished
to meet Dumouriez, as she had met Mirabeau and Barnave. Dumouriez has
preserved the details of this interview in his Memoirs.

How times had changed! Secrecy was almost necessary if one sought the
honor of speaking with the Queen of France. Even to salute her was to
expose one's self to the suspicion of belonging to the pretended
Austrian committee which was the perpetual object of popular invective.
When Louis XVI. told Dumouriez that the Queen desired a private
interview with him, the minister was not at all well pleased. He
thought it a useless step which might be misinterpreted by all parties.
However, {153} he must needs obey. He had received an order to go down
to the Queen an hour before the meeting of the Council. That it might
be the sooner over, he took the precaution of going half an hour late
to this perilous rendezvous. He had been presented to Marie Antoinette
on the day of his nomination as minister. She had then addressed him
several words, asking him to serve the King well, and he had replied
with a respectful phrase. Since then he had not seen her. When he
entered her room, he found the Queen alone, very much flushed, and
pacing to and fro in an agitation which promised a lively interview.
She approached him with an air of majestic irritation: "Sir!" she
exclaimed, "you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is by the favor
of the people, who soon break their idols. Your existence depends upon
your conduct." Dumouriez insisted on the necessity of scrupulously
respecting the Constitution, which Marie Antoinette was unwilling to
do. "It will not last," sh