Madame de Polignac, Madame de Guiche, and the Count de Vaudreuil, favorites of the Queen, the Abbe de Vermont her confessor, the Prince of Conde. and Duke of Bourbon fled.  The King came to Paris, leaving the Queen in consternation for his return.  Omitting the less important figures of the procession, the King’s carriage was in the centre; on each side of it, the Assembly, in two ranks afoot; at their head the Marquis de la Fayette, as commander-in-chief, on horse-back, and Bourgeois guards before and behind.  About sixty thousand citizens, of all forms and conditions, armed with the conquests of the Bastile and Invalids, as far as they would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning hooks, scythes, &c. lined all the streets through which the procession passed, and with the crowds of people in the streets, doors, and windows, saluted them everywhere with the cries of ’Vive la Nation,’ but not a single ‘Vive le Roi’ was heard.  The King stopped at the Hotel de Ville.  There M. Bailly presented, and put into his hat, the popular cockade, and addressed him.  The King being unprepared, and unable to answer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the audience, as from the King.  On their return, the popular cries were ‘Vive le Roi et la Nation.’  He was conducted by a garde Bourgeoise, to his palace at Versailles, and thus concluded such an ’amende honorable,’ as no sovereign ever made, and no people ever received.

And here, again, was lost another precious occasion of sparing to France the crimes and cruelties through which she has since passed, and to Europe, and finally America, the evils which flowed on them also from this mortal source.  The King was now become a passive machine in the hands of the National Assembly, and had he been left to himself, he would have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should devise as best for the nation.  A wise constitution would have been formed, hereditary in his line, himself placed at its head, with powers so large, as to enable him to do all the good of his station, and so limited, as to restrain him from its abuse.  This he would have faithfully administered, and more than this, I do not believe, he ever wished.  But he had a Queen of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points.  This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck.  Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d’Artois, and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness,