The palace was now indeed a scene of misery.  The king’s apathy was degenerating into despair.  At one time he was so utterly prostrated that he remained for ten days absolutely silent, never uttering a word except to name his throws when playing at backgammon with Elizabeth.  At last the queen roused him from his torpor, throwing herself at his feet, and mingling caresses with her expostulations; entreating him to remember what he owed to his family, and reminding him that, if they must perish, it was better at least to perish with honor, and be king to the last, than to wait passively till assassins should come and murder them in their own rooms.  She herself was in a condition in which nothing but her indomitable courage prevented her from utterly breaking down.  Sleep had deserted her.  By day she rarely ventured out-of-doors.  Riding she had given up, and she feared to walk in the garden of the Tuileries, even in the little portion marked off for the dauphin’s playground, lest she should expose herself to the coarse insults which, the basest of hirelings were ever on the watch to offer her.[7] She could not even venture to go openly to mass at Easter, but was forced to arrange for one of her chaplains to perform the service for her before daylight.  Balked of their wish to offer her personal insults, her enemies redoubled their diligence in inventing and spreading libels.  The demagogues of the Palais Royal revived the stories of her subservience to the interests of Austria, and even sent letters forged in her name to different members of the Assembly, inviting them to private conferences with her in the apartments of Madame de Lamballe.  But she treated all such attacks with lofty disdain, and was even greatly annoyed when she learned that the chief of the police, with the king’s sanction, had bought up a life of Madame La Mothe, in which that infamous woman pretended to give a true account of the affair of her necklace, and had had it burned in the manufactory of Sevres.  She thought, with some reason, that to take a step which seemed to show a dread of such attacks was the surest way to encourage more of them, and that apparent indifference to them was the only line of action consistent with her innocence or with her dignity.

The increasing dangers of her position moved the pity of some who had once been her enemies, and sharpened their desire to serve her.  Barnave, who probably overrated his present influence[8] in many letters pressed his advice upon her; of which the substance was that she should lay aside her distrust of the Constitutionalist party, and, with the king, throw herself wholly on the Constitution, to which the nation was profoundly attached.  He even admitted that it was not without defects; but held out a hope that, with the aid of the Royalists, he and his friends might be able to amend them, and in time to re-invest the throne with all necessary splendor.  And the queen was so touched by his evident earnestness that she