As May proceeds she presses on her preparations, and urges the emperor to accelerate his, especially the movements of his troops; but the Count d’Artois and his followers are a terrible addition to her anxieties.  Leopold had told her that the ancient minister, Calonne, always restless and always unscrupulous, was now with the count, and was busily stirring him up to undertake some enterprise or other;[8] and her reply shows how justly she dreads the results of such an alliance.  “The prince, the Count d’Artois, and all those whom they have about them, seem determined to be doing something.  They have no proper means of action, and they will ruin us, without our having the slightest connection with their plans.  Their indiscretion, and the men who are guiding them, will prevent our communicating our secret to them till the very last moment.”

To Mercy she is even more explicit in her description of the imminence of the danger to which the king and she are now exposed than she had been to her brother.  As the time for attempting to escape grew nearer, the embassador became the more painfully impressed with the danger of the attempt.  Failure, as it seems to him, will be absolutely fatal.  He asks her anxiously whether the necessity is such that it has become indispensable to risk such a result;[9] and she, in an answer of considerable length and admirable clearness of expression and argument, explains her reasons for deciding that it is absolutely unavoidable:  “The only alternative for us, especially since the 18th of April,[10] is either blindly to submit to all that the factions require, or to perish by the sword which is forever suspended over our heads.  Believe me, I am not exaggerating the danger; you know that my notion used to be, as long as I could cherish it, to trust to gentleness, to time, and to public opinion.  But now all is changed, and we must either perish or take the only line which remains to us.  We are far from shutting our eyes to the fact that this line also has its perils; but, if we must die, it will be at least with glory, and in having done all that we could for our duty, for honor, and for religion....  I believe that the provinces are less corrupted than the capital; but it is always Paris which gives the tone to the whole kingdom.  We should greatly deceive ourselves if we fancied that the events of the 18th of April, horrible as they were, produced any excitement in the provinces.  The clubs and the affiliations lead France where they please; the right-thinking people, and those who are dissatisfied with what is taking place, either flee from the country or hide themselves, because they are not the stronger party, and because they have no rallying-point.  But when the king can show himself freely in a fortified place, people will be astonished to see the number of dissatisfied people who will then come forward, who, till that time, are groaning in silence; but the longer we delay, the less support we shall have....