efend himself by taxing him with cowardice;
lastly, of having never ceased to plot and correspond with foreigners
since her captivity in the Temple, and of having there treated her young
son as King. We here observe how, on the terrible day of long-deferred
vengeance, when subjects at length break forth and strike such of their
princes as have not deserved the blow, everything is distorted and
converted into crime. We see how the profusion and fondness for pleasure,
so natural to a young princess, how her attachment to her native country,
her influence over her husband, her regrets, always more indiscreet in a
woman than a man, nay, even her bolder courage, appeared to their inflamed
or malignant imaginations.
It was necessary to produce witnesses. Lecointre, deputy of Versailles,
who had seen what had passed on the 5th and 6th of October, Hebert, who
had frequently visited the Temple, various clerks in the ministerial
offices, and several domestic servants of the old Court were summoned..
Admiral d'Estaing, formerly commandant of the guard of Versailles; Manuel,
the ex-procureur of the Commune; Latour-du-Pin, minister of war in 1789;
the venerable Bailly, who, it was said, had been, with La Fayette, an
accomplice in the journey to Varennes; lastly, Valaze one of the
Girondists destined to the scaffold, were taken from their prisons and
compelled to give evidence.
No precise fact was elicited. Some had seen the Queen in high spirits
when the Life Guards testified their attachment; others had seen her vexed
and dejected while being conducted to Paris, or brought back from
Varennes; these had been present at splendid festivities which must have
cost enormous sums; those had heard it said in the ministerial offices
that the Queen was adverse to the sanction of the decrees. An ancient
waiting-woman of the Queen had heard the Duc de Coigny say, in 1788, that
the Emperor had already received two hundred millions from France to make
war upon the Turks.
The cynical Hebert, being brought before the unfortunate Queen, dared at
length to prefer the charges wrung from the young Prince. He said that
Charles Capet had given Simon an account of the journey to Varennes, and
mentioned La Fayette and Bailly as having cooperated in it. He then added
that this boy was addicted to odious and very premature vices for his age;
that he had been surprised by Simon, who, on questioning him, learned that
he derived from his mother the
|