could settle
that affair. From that moment the Queen had regarded this phrase as an
inadvertence of the propagandists."

On the very day when Marie Antoinette's brother died, Louis XVI.'s
Minister of Foreign Affairs, De Lessart, had enraged the National
Assembly by reading them extracts from his diplomatic correspondence,
which they found not sufficiently firm. They were indignant at a
despatch in which Prince de Kaunitz said: "The latest events give us
hopes; it appears that the majority of the French nation, impressed
with the evils they have prepared, are returning to more moderate
principles, and incline to render to the throne the dignity and
authority which are the essence of monarchical government." When De
Lessart came down from the tribune, the whispering changed into cries
of rage and threats against the minister and the court, which, it was
said, was planning a counter-revolution at the Tuileries, and dictating
to the cabinet of Vienna the language by which it hoped to intimidate
France. {29} At the evening session of the same day, Rouyer, a deputy,
proposed to impeach the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "Is it possible,"
cried he, "that a perfidious minister should come here to make a parade
of his work and lay the responsibility of it on a foreign power? Will
the time never arrive when ministers shall cease to betray us? Were my
head to be the price of the denunciation I am making, I would none the
less go on with it." At the session of March 6, Guadet said: "It is
time to know whether the ministers wish to make Louis XVI. King of the
French, or the King of Coblentz."

On the 10th the storm broke. The day before, Narbonne had received his
dismission. Brissot accused De Lessart of having compromised the
safety of France, withheld from the Assembly the documents establishing
the alliance between the Emperor and the King of Prussia, discredited
the assignats, depreciated the credit, lowered the rate of exchange,
and encouraged interior disorder. Vergniaud followed him, exclaiming:
"From the tribune where I am speaking may be seen the palace where
perverse counsellors lead astray and deceive the King given to you by
the Constitution; where they forge chains for the nation, and arrange
the manoeuvres which are to deliver us up to Austria, after having
caused us to pass through the horrors of civil war. Terror and dismay
have often issued from that famous palace. Let them re-enter it to-day
in the nam