But already the palace was deserted by those who were the intended objects of the attack.  Roederer, and one or two of the municipal magistrates, in whom the indignity with which the new commissioners of the sections had treated them had excited a feeling of personal indignation, had been actively endeavoring to rouse the National Guards to an energetic resistance; but they had wholly failed.  Those who listened to them most favorably would only promise to defend themselves if attacked, while some of the artillery-men drew the charges from their guns and extinguished their matches.  Roederer, whom the strange vicissitudes of the crisis had for the moment rendered the king’s chief adviser, though there seems no reason to doubt his good faith, was not a man of that fiery courage which hopes against hope, and can stimulate waverers by its example.  He saw that if the rioters should succeed in storming the palace, and should find the king and his family there, the moment that made them masters of their persons would be the last of their lives and of the monarchy.  He returned into the palace to represent to Louis the utter hopelessness of making any defense, and to recommend him, as his sole resource, to claim the protection of the Assembly.  The queen, who, to use her own words, would have preferred being nailed to the walls of the palace to seeking a refuge which she deemed degrading, pointed to the soldiers, and showed by her gestures that they were the only protectors whom it became them to look to.  Roederer assured her that they could not he relied on.  She seemed unconvinced.  He almost forgot his respect in his earnestness.  “If you refuse, madame, you will be guilty of the blood of the king, of your two children; you will destroy yourself, and every soul within the palace.”  While she was still hesitating between her feeling of shame and her anxiety for those dearest to her, the king gave the word.  “Let us go,” said he.  “Let us give this last proof of our devotion to the Constitution.”  The princess spoke.  “Could Roederer answer for the king’s life?” He affirmed that he would answer for it with his own.  The queen repeated the question.  “Madame,” he replied, “we will answer for dying at your side—­that is all that we can promise.”  “Let us go,” said Louis, and moved toward the door.  Even at the last moment, one officer, M. Boscari, commander of a battalion of the National Guard, known as that of Les Filles St. Thomas, whose loyalty no disaster had ever been able to shake, implored him to change his mind.  His men, united to the Swiss, would be able, he said, to cut a way for the royal family to the Rouen road; the insurgents were all on the other side of the city, and nothing could resist him.  But again, as on all previous occasions, Louis rejected the brave advice.  He pleaded the risk to which he should expose those dearest to him, and led them to almost certain death in committing them to the Assembly.  Some of De Mailly’s gentlemen gathered round him to accompany him; but such an escort seemed to Roederer likely to provoke additional animosity, and at his entreaty Louis trusted himself to a company of his faithful Swiss and to a detachment of the National Guard, who formed themselves into an escort to conduct him to the Assembly, whose hall looked into one side of the palace garden.