med
Couthon, who at first belonged to the same party, though he afterward
joined the Jacobins, carried a motion that, when Louis came to open the
Assembly, the president should occupy the place of honor, and the second
seat should be allotted to the sovereign.

Still, for a moment it seemed as if they had overshot their mark, and as
if the more loyal party would be able to withstand and defeat them. The
Assembly itself was compelled to repeal its recent votes, since Louis,
whom indignation for once inspired with greater firmness than he usually
displayed, refused to open the new Assembly in person unless he were to be
received with the honors to which his rank entitled him. The offensive
resolutions were canceled; and, when he had therefore opened the session
in a dignified and conciliatory speech which was chiefly of his own
composition, the president, M. Pastoret, a member of the Constitutional
party, replied in a language which was not only respectful, but
affectionate. The Constitution, he said, had given the king friends in
those who were formerly only styled his subjects. The Assembly and the
nation felt the need of his love. As the Constitution had rendered him the
greatest monarch in the world, so his attachment to it would place him
among the kings most beloved by their people.

And it seemed as if the Parisians in general shared to the full the loyal
sentiments uttered by M. Pastoret. Writing the same week to her brother,
Marie Antoinette, with a confidence which could only spring from a sincere
attachment to the whole nation, reiterated her old opinion that "the good
citizens and good people had always in their hearts been friendly to the
king and herself;[2]" and expressed her belief that since the acceptance
of the Constitution the people "had again learned to trust them." She was
"far from giving herself up to a blind confidence. She knew that the
disaffected had not abandoned their treasonable purposes; but, as the king
and she herself were resolved to unite themselves in sincere good faith to
the people, it was impossible but that, when their real feelings were
known, the bulk of the people should return to them. The mischief was that
the well-meaning knew not how to act in concert."

It did seem as if she were correct in her estimate of the feelings of the
citizens, when, in the evening of the day on which Louis had opened the
Assembly, the whole royal family, including the two children, went to the
o