e hoofs of the horses.

It was the 25th of June, 1791, at seven o'clock in the evening, when
this dreadful procession, passing through the Barrier de l'Etoile,
entered the city, and traversed the streets, through double files of
soldiers, to the Tuileries. At length they arrived, half dead with
exhaustion and despair, at the palace. The crowd was so immense that it
was with the utmost difficulty that an entrance could be effected. At
that moment, La Fayette, who had been adopting the most vigorous
measures for the protection of the persons of the royal family, came to
meet them. The moment Maria Antoinette saw him, forgetful of her own
danger, and trembling for the body-guard who had periled their lives for
her family, she exclaimed, "Monsieur La Fayette, save the body-guard."
The king and queen alighted from the carriage. Some of the soldiers took
the children, and carried them through the crowd into the palace. A
member of the Assembly, who had been inimical to the King, came forward,
and offered his arm to the queen for her protection. She looked him a
moment in the face, and indignantly rejected the proffered aid of an
enemy. Then, seeing a deputy who had been their friend, she eagerly
accepted his arm, and ascended the steps of the palace. A prolonged
roar, as of thunder, ascended from the multitudinous throng which
surrounded the palace when the king and queen had entered, and the doors
of their prison were again closed against them.

[Illustration: THE TUILERIES.]

La Fayette was at the head of the National Guard. He was a strong
advocate for the rights of the people. At the same time, he wished
to respect the rights of the king, and to sustain a constitutional
monarchy. As soon as they had entered the palace, Maria Antoinette,
with that indomitable spirit which ever characterized her, approached
La Fayette, and offered to him the keys of her casket, as if he were
her jailer. La Fayette, deeply wounded, refused to receive them. The
queen indignantly, with her own hands, placed them in his hat. "Your
majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said the marquis,
"for I certainly shall not touch them."

The position of La Fayette at this time was about as embarrassing as it
could possibly have been; and he was virtually the jailer of the royal
family, answerable with his life for their safe keeping. He had always
been a firm friend of civil and religious liberty. He was very anxious
to see France blessed