On the morning of the 17th, Louis set out for Paris in a single carriage, escorted by a very slender guard and accompanied by a party of the deputies.  He was fully alive to the danger he was incurring.  He knew that threats had been openly uttered that he should not reach Paris alive;[4] and he had prepared for his journey as for death, burning his papers, taking the sacrament, and making arrangements for a regency.  Marie Antoinette was almost hopeless of his safety.  She sat with her children in her private room, shedding no tears, lest the knowledge of her grief should increase the alarm of her attendants; but her carriages were kept harnessed, and she had prepared and learned by heart a short speech, with which, if the worst news which she apprehended should arrive, she intended to repair to the Assembly, and claim its protection for the wife and children of their sovereign.[5] But often, as she rehearsed it, her voice, in spite of all her efforts, was broken by sobs, and her reiterated exclamation, “They will never let him return!” but too truly expressed the deep forebodings of her heart.

They were not yet fated to be realized; the Insurrection Committee had already organized a force which they had entitled the National Guard, and of which they had conferred the command on the Marquis de La Fayette, And at the gates of the city the king was met by him and the mayor, a man named Bailly, who had achieved a considerable reputation as a mathematician and an astronomer, but who was thoroughly imbued with the leveling and irreligious doctrines of the school of the Encyclopedists.  No men in Paris were less likely to treat their sovereign with due respect.

Since his return from America, La Fayette had been living in retirement on his estate, till at the recent election he had been returned to the States-general as one of the representatives of the nobles for his native province of Auvergne.  He had taken no part in the debates, being entirely destitute of political abilities;[6] and he had apparently no very distinct political views, but wavered between a desire for a republic, such, as that of which he had witnessed the establishment in America, and a feeling in favor of a limited monarchy such as he understood to exist in Great Britain, though he had no accurate comprehension of its most essential principles.  But his ruling passion was a desire for popularity; and as he had always been vain of his unbending ill-manners as a proof of his liberal sentiments,[7] and as his vanity made him regard kings and queens with a general dislike, as being of a rank superior to his own, he looked on the present occurrence as a favorable opportunity for gaining the good-will of the mob, by showing marked disrespect to Louis.  He would not even pay him the ordinary compliment of appearing in uniform, but headed his new troops in plain clothes; and even those were not such as belonged to his rank, but were the ordinary dress of a plain citizen; while Bailly’s address, as Louis entered the gates, was marked with the most studied and gratuitous insolence.  “Sire,” said he, “I present to your majesty the keys of your good city of Paris.  They are the same which were presented to Henri IV.  He had conquered his people:  to-day the people have conquered their king.”