nd the conviction of the king's perfect honesty and
patriotism which this intercourse forced upon him, revived his old
feelings of loyalty, and, so long as he remained in office, he honestly
endeavored to avert the evils which he foresaw, and to give the advice and
to support the policy by which, in his honest belief, it was alone
possible for Louis to preserve his authority.

Dumouriez was a gentleman in birth and manners; but his colleagues had so
little of either the habits or appearance of decent society that the
attendants on the royal family gave them the name of the Sans-culottes;
and this name, meant originally to describe the absence of the ordinary
court dress, without which no previous ministers had ever ventured to
appear in the presence of royalty, was presently adopted as a distinctive
title by the whole body of the extreme revolutionists, who knew the value
of a name under which to bind their followers together.[3]

The attacks on the ministry were accompanied with more direct attacks on
the king and queen themselves than had ever been ventured on in the former
Assembly. By this time the system of espial and treachery by which they
were surrounded had become so systematic that they could not even send a
messenger to their nephew, the emperor, except under a feigned name;[4]
and the Baron de Breteuil, who announced his mission to Francis, reported
to him at the same time that the chiefs of the Assembly were proposing to
pass votes suspending the "king from his functions, and to separate the
queen from him on the ground that an impeachment was to be presented
against both, as having solicited the late emperor to form a confederacy
among the great powers of Europe in favor of the royal prerogative." The
queen was, in fact, now, as always, more the object of their hatred than
her husband, and toward the end of March a reconciliation of all her
enemies took place, that the attack upon her might be combined with a
strength that should insure its success. The Marquis de Condorcet, a man
of some eminence in philosophy, as the word had been understood since the
reign of the Encyclopedists, and closely connected with the Girondins,
though not formally enrolled in their party, gave a supper, at which the
Duc d'Orleans formally reconciled himself to La Fayette; and both, in
company with Brissot and the Abbe Sieyes, who of late had scarcely been
heard of, drew up an indictment against the queen.[5] Their malignity even