anxious to save the lives of the king and queen, and to have been seriously convinced that they were in danger, had now formally opened a communication with the court.  He concerted his plans with Marshal Luckner, and had learned so much wisdom from his recent failure that he now placed no reliance on any thing but a display of superior force.  He accordingly proposed to Louis to bring up a battalion of picked men from his and the marshal’s armies to escort him to the Champ de Mars; and, judging that, even if the feast should pass off without any fresh danger, the king could never be considered permanently safe while he remained in Paris, he recommended that on the next day, Louis, still under the protection of the same troops, should announce to the Assembly his departure for Compiegne, and should at once quit the capital for that town, to which trusty officers would in the mean time have brought up other divisions of the army in sufficient strength to set all disaffected and seditious spirits at defiance.

The plan was at all events well conceived, but it was declined.  Louis did not apparently distrust the marquis’s good faith, but he doubted his ability to carry out an enterprise requiring an energy and decision of which no part of La Fayette’s career had given any indication; while the queen distrusted his loyalty even more than his capacity.  One of those with whom she took counsel expressed his opinion of the marquis’s real object by saying that he might save the monarch, but not the monarchy; and she replied that his head was still full of republican notions which he had brought from America, and refused to place the slightest confidence in him.  We may suspect that she did not do him entire justice, and may rather believe, with Louis, that he was now acting in good faith; but, with a recollection of all that she had suffered at his hands, we can not wonder at her continued distrust of him.[A7]

But his was not the only plan proposed for the escape of the royal family.  Bertrand de Moleville, though no longer Louis’s minister, retained his undiminished confidence, and he had found a place which he regarded as admirably suited for a temporary retreat—­the Castle of Gaillon, near the left bank of the Seine, in Normandy, the people of which province were almost universally loyal.  It was within the twenty leagues from Paris which the Assembly had fixed for the limit of the royal journeys; while yet, in case of the worst, it was likewise within easy distance of the coast.  An able engineer officer had pronounced it to be thoroughly defensible; and the Count d’Hervilly, with other officers of proved courage and presence of mind, undertook the arrangement of all the military measures necessary for the safe escort of the entire royal family, which they themselves were willing to conduct, with the aid of some detachments of the Swiss Guards; while the necessary funds were provided by the loyal devotion of the Duke de Liancourt, who placed a million of francs at his sovereign’s disposal, and of one or two other nobles who came forward with almost equally lavish offerings.  Louis certainly at first regarded the plan with favor, and, in the opinion of M. Bertrand, it would not have been difficult to induce him to adopt it, if the queen could have been brought over to a similar view.