Among those who thus fled were the king's two aunts, the Princesses
Adelaide and Victoire. Bigotry was their only virtue; and they determined
to seek shelter in Rome. Louis highly disapproved of the step, which, as
Mirabeau,[14] in a very elaborate and forcible memorial which he drew up
and submitted to him, pointed out, might be very dangerous for the king
and queen as well as for themselves, since it could be easily represented
by the evil-minded as a certain proof that they also were designing to
flee. And he even recommended that Louis should formally notify to the
Assembly that he disapproved of his aunts' journey, and should make it a
pretext for demanding a law which should give him the power of regulating
the movements of the members of his family.

The flight of the princesses, however, did not, as it turned out, cause
any inconvenience to the king or queen, though it did endanger themselves;
for, though they were furnished with passports, the municipal authorities
tried to stop them at Moret; and at Arnay-le-Duc the mob unharnessed their
horses and detained them by force They appealed to the Assembly by letter;
Alexander Lameth, on this occasion uniting with the most violent Jacobins,
was not ashamed to move that orders should be dispatched to send them back
to Paris: but the body of the Assembly had not yet descended to the
baseness of warring with women; and Mirabeau, who treated the proposal as
ridiculous, and overwhelmed the mover with his wit, had no difficulty in
procuring an order that the fugitives, "two princesses of advanced age and
timorous consciences," as he called them, should be allowed to proceed on
their journey.

CHAPTER XXX.

The Mob attacks the Castle at Vincennes.--La Fayette saves it.--He insults
the Nobles who come to protect the King.--Perverseness of the Count
d'Artois and the Emigrants.--Mirabeau dies.--General Sorrow for his
death.--He would probably not have been able to arrest the Revolution.--
The Mob prevent the King from visiting St. Cloud.--The Assembly passes a
Vote to forbid him to go more than twenty Leagues from Paris.

The mob, however, was more completely under Jacobin influence; and, at the
end of February, Santerre collected his ruffians for a fresh tumult; the
object now being the destruction of the old castle of Vincennes, which for
some time had been almost unoccupied. La Fayette, whose object at this
time was apparently regulated by a desire to make all