The die was cast.  Nothing was left but to wait, with such patience as might be, for the coming explosion, which was sure not to be long deferred.  Madame de Stael has said that there never can be a conspiracy, in the proper sense of the word, in Paris; and that if there could be one, it would be superfluous, since every one at all times follows the majority, and no one ever keeps a secret.  But on this occasion the chief movers of sedition studiously discarded all appearance of concealment.  Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne wrote the king a letter couched in terms of the most insolent defiance, and signed with all their names, in which they openly announced to him that an insurrection was organized which should be abandoned if he replaced Roland and his colleagues in the ministry, but which should surely break on the palace and overwhelm it if he refused.  And Barbaroux, who had promised Madame Roland to bring up from Marseilles and other towns in the south a band of men capable of any atrocity, had collected a gang of five hundred miscreants, the refuse of the galleys and the jails, and paraded them in triumph through the streets, which their arrival was destined and intended to deluge with blood.

And yet Louis, or, to speak more correctly, Marie Antoinette, for it was with her that every decision rested, preferred to face the impending struggle in Paris.  She still believed that the king had many friends in whose devotion and gallantry he could confide to the very death.  On Sunday, the 5th of August, the very last Sunday which he was ever to behold as the acknowledged sovereign of the land, his levee was attended by a more than usually numerous and brilliant company; though the gayety appropriate to such a scene was on this occasion clouded over by the anxiety for their royal master and mistress which sobered every one’s demeanor, and spread a gloom over every countenance.  And three days later both the Assembly and the National Guard displayed feelings which, to so sanguine a temper as hers, seemed to show a disposition to make a stout resistance to the further progress of disorder.  The Assembly, by a majority of more than two to one, rejected a motion made by Vergniaud for the impeachment of La Fayette for his conduct in June; and when the mob fell upon those who had voted against it, as they came out of the hall, the National Guard came promptly to their rescue, and inflicted severe chastisement on the foremost of the rioters.

The vote of the Assembly may be said to have been the last it ever gave for any object but the promotion of anarchy.  It more than neutralized its effect the very next day, when it passed a decree for the immediate removal of three regiments of the line which were quartered in Paris.  It even at first included in its resolution the Swiss Guards also; but was subsequently compelled to withdraw that clause, since an old treaty with Switzerland expressly secured to the republic the right of always furnishing a regiment for the