pression which she had made on the people; and
her faithful attendant, Madame Campan, has preserved more minute details
of the events of the 7th than she herself reported to the embassador. She
was hardly dressed when a huge crowd collected on the terrace under her
window, shouting for her to show herself; and, when she came forward, they
began to accost her in a mingled tone of expostulation and menace. "She
must drive away the courtiers who were the ruin of kings. She must love
the inhabitants of her good city." She replied "that she had always felt
so toward them; she had loved them while at Versailles; she should
continue to love them at Paris." "Ah," interrupted a virago, hardier than
her companions, "but on the 14th of July you would have besieged and
bombarded the city; and on the 6th of October you wanted to flee to the
frontier." She answered, in the gentlest tone, that "these were idle
stories, which they were wrong to believe; tales like these were what
caused at once the misery of the people and that of the best of kings."
Another woman addressed her in German. Marie Antoinette declared that "she
did not understand what she said; that she had become so completely French
that she had forgotten her native language;" and the compliment to their
country fairly vanquished them. They received it with shouts of "Bravo,"
and with loud clapping of their hands. They begged the ribbons and flowers
of her bonnet. She took them off with her own hand and distributed them
among them; and they divided the spoils with thankful exultation, smiling,
waving their hands, and crying out, "Long live Marie Antoinette! Long live
our good queen![3]"

For a time it seemed as if the fortunes of the king and country were being
weighed in an uncertain balance. One day some circumstances seemed to hold
out a prospect of the re-establishment of tranquillity, and of the return
of the masses to a better feeling. The next day these favorable
appearances were more than counterbalanced by fresh evidences of the
increasing power of the factious and unscrupulous demagogues. It was
greatly in favor of the crown that the triumph of the mob on the 6th of
October had led to violent quarrels between the Duc d'Orleans, La Fayette,
and Mirabeau. La Fayette had charged the duke with having entered into a
plot to assassinate him, and threatened to impeach him formally if he did
not at once quit the kingdom.[4] The duke trembled and consented, easily
procur