ake place at Paris during the interval, and spoke
to me of the King's want of energy, but always in terms expressive of her
veneration for his virtues and her attachment to himself.--"The King,"
said she, "is not a coward; he possesses abundance of passive courage, but
he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which
proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid
to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers.
He lived like a child, and always ill at ease under the eyes of Louis XV.,
until the age of twenty-one. This constraint confirmed his timidity.

"Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words addressed to the
Parisians, who are devoted to him, would multiply the strength of our
party a hundredfold: he will not utter them. What can we expect from
those addresses to the people which he has been advised to post up?
Nothing but fresh outrages. As for myself, I could do anything, and would
appear on horseback if necessary. But if I were really to begin to act,
that would be furnishing arms to the King's enemies; the cry against the
Austrian, and against the sway of a woman, would become general in France;
and, moreover, by showing myself, I should render the King a mere nothing.
A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to remain
passive and prepare to die."

The garden of the Tuileries was full of maddened men, who insulted all who
seemed to side with the Court. "The Life of Marie Antoinette" was cried
under the Queen's windows, infamous plates were annexed to the book, the
hawkers showed them to the passersby. On all sides were heard the
jubilant outcries of a people in a state of delirium almost as frightful
as the explosion of their rage. The Queen and her children were unable to
breathe the open air any longer. It was determined that the garden of the
Tuileries should be closed: as soon as this step was taken the Assembly
decreed that the whole length of the Terrace des Feuillans belonged to it,
and fixed the boundary between what was called the national ground and the
Coblentz ground by a tricoloured ribbon stretched from one end of the
terrace to the other. All good citizens were ordered, by notices affixed
to it, not to go down into the garden, under pain of being treated in the
same manner as Foulon and Berthier. A young man who did not observe this
written order went down into the garden; furious outcries