of his party in the Paris guard.

On his arrival a plan was presented to the Queen, in which it was proposed
by a junction between La Fayette's army and the King's party to rescue the
royal family and convey them to Rouen. I did not learn the particulars of
this plan; the Queen only said to me upon the subject that M. de La
Fayette was offered to them as a resource; but that it would be better for
them to perish than to owe their safety to the man who had done them the
most mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity of treating with
him.

I passed the whole month of July without going to bed; I was fearful of
some attack by night. There was one plot against the Queen's life which
has never been made known. I was alone by her bedside at one o'clock in
the morning; we heard somebody walking softly down the corridor, which
passes along the whole line of her apartments, and which was then locked
at each end. I went out to fetch the valet de chambre; he entered the
corridor, and the Queen and myself soon heard the noise of two men
fighting. The unfortunate Princess held me locked in her arms, and said
to me, "What a situation! insults by day and assassins by night!" The
valet de chambre cried out to her from the corridor, "Madame, it is a
wretch that I know; I have him!"--"Let him go," said the Queen; "open the
door to him; he came to murder me; the Jacobins would carry him about in
triumph to-morrow." The man was a servant of the King's toilet, who had
taken the key of the corridor out of his Majesty's pocket after he was in
bed, no doubt with the intention of committing the crime suspected. The
valet de chambre, who was a very strong man, held him by the wrists, and
thrust him out at the door. The wretch did not speak a word. The valet
de chambre said, in answer to the Queen, who spoke to him gratefully of
the danger to which he had exposed himself, that he feared nothing, and
that he had always a pair of excellent pistols about him for no other
purpose than to defend her Majesty. The next day M. de Septeuil had all
the locks of the King's inner apartments changed. I did the same by those
of the Queen.

We were every moment told that the Faubourg St. Antoine was preparing to
march against the palace. At four o'clock one morning towards the latter
end of July a person came to give me information to that effect. I
instantly sent off two men, on whom I could rely, with orders to proceed
to the usual p