[2] This story reached even distant province.  On the 24th of July Arthur Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the table-d’hote “That the queen had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all Paris.”  A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues.  A deputy had written it; they had seen the letter.  And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that “the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d’Artois, to set fire to Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine.”—­ARTHUR YOUNG’S Travels, etc., in France, pp. 143, 151.

[3] “Car des ce moment on menacait Versailles d’une incursion de gens armes de Paris.”—­MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

[4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.

[5] She meant to say, “Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains l’epouse et la famille de votre souverain.  Ne souffrez pas que l’on desunisse sur la terre ce qui a ete uni dans le ciel.”—­MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.

[6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views:  “Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant a Ste. Helene le traitait avec plus de mepris [que Madame de Stael].  ’La Fayette etait encore un autre niais.  Il etait nullement taille pour le role qu’il avait a jouer....  C’etait un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borne, caractere dissimule, domine par des idees vagues de liberte mal digerees chez lui; mal concues.’”—­Biographie Universelle.

[7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the “gaucherie de ses manieres qui ne se plierent jamais aux graces de la Cour,” p. 7.

[8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king’s journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.

[9] “Souvenirs de Quarante Ans” (by Madame de Tourzel’s daughter), p. 30.

[10] Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 240.

CHAPTER XXV.

[1] “Memoires de la Princesse de Lamballe,” i., p. 342.

[2] Les Gardes du Corps.

[3] Louis Blanc, iii., p. 156, quoting the Procedure du Chatelet.

[4] “Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy,” vol. vii, p. 119.

[5] There is some uncertainty where La Fayette slept that night.  Lacretelle says it was at the “Maison du Prince de Foix, fort eloignee du chateau.”  Count Dumas, meaning to be as favorable to him as possible, places him at the Hotel de Noailles, which is “not one hundred paces from the iron gates of the chapel” ("Memoirs of the Count Dumas,” p. 159).  However, the nearer he was to the palace, the more incomprehensible it is that he should not have reached the palace the next morning till nearly eight o’clock, two hours after the mob had forced their entrance into the Cour des Princes.