e with giving the memorial and
stating the views of the writer to the Count de Provence; and that prince
declared that it would be useless to bring it to the knowledge of either
king or queen: "that the queen had not sufficient influence over her
husband to induce him to adopt such a plan;" and he even hinted that at
times Louis was disposed to be jealous of her appearing to influence him.

But if these circumstances--the quarrel between the enemies of the court,
and the conversion of one more able and formidable than either--were in
the king's favor, other events which took place in the same few weeks were
full of mischief and danger. Before the end of the month fresh riots broke
out in Paris. Bread, the supply of which Marie Antoinette, as we have
seen, rightly regarded as a matter of the first importance to the
tranquillity of the city, continued scarce and dear; and the mob broke
open the bakers' shops, and murdered one baker, a man named Francois, with
a ferocity more terrible than they had even shown toward De Launay, or the
guards at Versailles. They tore his body to pieces, and, having cut off
his head, compelled his wife to kiss the scarcely cold lips, and then left
her fainting on the pavement still covered with his blood. Even La Fayette
was horror-stricken at such brutality. It was the only occasion on which
he did his duty during the whole progress of the Revolution. He came down
with a company of the National Guard, dispersed the rioters, seized the
ruffian who was bearing aloft, the head of the murdered man on a pole, and
caused him to be hanged the next day. And during the next few weeks he
more than once brought his soldiers to the support of the civil power, and
inflicted summary punishment on gangs of miscreants, whose idea of reform
was a state of things which should afford impunity to crime.

But in the next month the Assembly dealt a heavier blow on the king's
authority than could be inflicted by the worst excesses of an informal
mob--they passed a resolution prohibiting any of its members from
accepting any office in the administration: it was an imitation of the
self-denying ordinance into which Cromwell had tricked the English
Parliament; and, though bearing an appearance of disinterestedness in
closing the access to official emoluments and honors against themselves,
was in reality an injury to the king, as depriving him of his right to
select his ministers from the entire body of the nation; and