quasi-mutiny; speaking rude disobedient words;
threatening the mounted Guards with sharp shot if they hurt the people.
Lafayette mounts and dismounts; runs haranguing, panting; on the verge
of despair. For an hour and three-quarters; 'seven quarters of an hour,'
by the Tuileries Clock! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were
it by the cannon's mouth, if his Majesty will order. Their Majesties,
counselled to it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount;
and retire in, with heavy indignant heart; giving up the enterprise.
Maison-bouche may eat that cooked dinner themselves; his Majesty shall
not see Saint-Cloud this day,--or any day. (Deux Amis, vi. c. 1; Hist.
Parl. ix. 407-14.)

The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become a sad
fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality deliberates,
proposes to petition or address; Sections respond with sullen brevity
of negation. Lafayette flings down his Commission; appears in civic
pepper-and-salt frock; and cannot be flattered back again;--not in less
than three days; and by unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling
to him, and declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free
men kneeling here to the Statue of Liberty. For the rest, those
Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,--yet indeed are
reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters.
The King must keep his Easter in Paris: meditating much on this singular
posture of things: but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire
being whetted by difficulty.

Chapter 2.4.II.

Easter at Paris.

For above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has
hovered a project of Flight before the royal mind; and ever and anon has
been condensing itself into something like a purpose; but this or the
other difficulty always vaporised it again. It seems so full of risks,
perhaps of civil war itself; above all, it cannot be done without
effort. Somnolent laziness will not serve: to fly, if not in a leather
vache, one must verily stir himself. Better to adopt that Constitution
of theirs; execute it so as to shew all men that it is inexecutable?
Better or not so good; surely it is easier. To all difficulties you need
only say, There is a lion in the path, behold your Constitution will
not act! For a somnolent person it requires no effort to counterfeit
death,--as Dame de Stael and Friends of Liberty can see the King's
Government long d