e reforms which they desired. Her
faithful waiting-woman, Madame de Campan, had gone down into the
court-yard and mingled with the crowd, to be the better able to judge of
their real feelings. She could see that many were disguised; and one
woman, whose veil of black lace, with which she concealed her features,
showed that she did not belong to the lowest class, seized her violently
by the arm, calling her by her name, and bid her "go and tell her queen
not to interfere any more in the Government, but to leave her husband and
the good States-general to work out the happiness of the people." Others
she heard uttering threats of vengeance against Madame de Polignac. And
one, while pouring forth "a thousand invectives" against both king and
queen, declared that it should soon be impossible to find even a fragment
of the throne on which they were now seated.

Marie Antoinette was greatly alarmed, not for herself, but for her
husband; and, now that he had determined on withdrawing the soldiers from
the capital, she earnestly entreated him to accompany them, taking the not
unreasonable view that the violence of the Parisian mob would be to some
extent quelled, and the well-intentioned portion of the Assembly would
have greater boldness to support their opinions, if the king were thus
placed out of the reach of danger from any fresh outbreak; and it was
generally understood that an attack on Versailles itself was
anticipated.[3] She felt so certain of the wisdom of such a course, and so
sanguine of prevailing, that she packed up her diamonds, burned many of
her papers, and drew up a set of orders for the arrangement of the details
of the journey. But on the morning of the 16th she was compelled to inform
Madame Campan that the plan was given up. Large portions of the Parisian
mob, and among them one deputation of the fish-women, who in this, as well
as on more festive occasions, claimed equally to take the lead, had come
out to demand that the king should visit Paris; and the Ministerial
Council thought it safer for him to comply with that petition than to
throw himself into the arms of the soldiers, a step which might not
improbably lead to a civil war.

To the queen this seemed the most dangerous course of all. She knew that
both at Versailles and at Paris the agents of the Duke of Orleans had been
scattering money with a lavish hand; and she scarcely doubted that either
on his road, or in the city, her husband would be assa