on the 9th of October, which seems established by
abundant testimony.

CHAPTER XXIV.

[1] A letter of Madame Roland dated the 26th of this very month, July,
1789, declares that the people "are undone if the National Assembly does
not proceed seriously and regularly to the trial of the illustrious heads
[the king and queen], or if some generous Decius does not risk his life to
take theirs."

[2] This story reached even distant province. On the 24th of July Arthur
Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the _table-d'hote_ "That the queen
had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National
Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all
Paris." A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was
immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues. A deputy had written it;
they had seen the letter. And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that
"the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is
that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and
monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d'Artois, to set fire to
Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine."--ARTHUR YOUNG'S _Travels,
etc., in France_, pp. 143, 151.

[3] "Car des ce moment on menacait Versailles d'une incursion de gens
armes de Paris."--MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

[4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.

[5] She meant to say, "Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains
l'epouse et la famille de votre souverain. Ne souffrez pas que l'on
desunisse sur la terre ce qui a ete uni dans le ciel."--MADAME DE CAMPAN,
ch. xiv.

[6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views:
"Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant a Ste. Helene le traitait avec
plus de mepris [que Madame de Stael]. 'La Fayette etait encore un autre
niais. Il etait nullement taille pour le role qu'il avait a jouer....
C'etait un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borne,
caractere dissimule, domine par des idees vagues de liberte mal digerees
chez lui; mal concues.'"--_Biographie Universelle_.

[7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manieres qui ne se
plierent jamais aux graces de la Cour," p. 7.

[8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day
or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.

[9] "Souvenirs de Quarante Ans" (by Madame de Tourzel's daughter), p. 30.

[10] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 24