has been taken of this voyage and my absence to impute to me, without refutation on my part, the most odious crimes.  It was I who wished to force the king to fly with the Dauphin from Versailles,—­but Versailles is not France; the king would have found his army and the nation when once he left this town, and the only result of my ambition would be civil war, and, a military dictatorship given to the king.  But the Count de Provence was alive; he was the natural heir to the throne thus abandoned.  He was popular; he had, like myself, joined the commons,—­thus I should only have laboured for him.  But the Count d’Artois was in safety in another country, his children were secure from my pretended murders, they were nearer the throne than myself.  What a series of follies, absurdities, or useless crimes!  The French nation, amidst the Revolution, have neither changed their character nor their sentiments.  I fully believe that the Count d’Artois, whom I have myself loved, will prove this.  I believe that by drawing nearer to a monarch whom he loves, and by whom he is loved, and to a people to whose love his brilliant qualities give him so great a right, he will, when these troubles have ceased, enjoy this portion of his inheritance, the love which the most sensible and affectionate of nations has vowed to the descendants of HENRI IV.”

XI.

These excuses, mingled doubtless with expressions of repentance and tears, and heightened by those attitudes and gestures, more eloquent than words, that add so much pathos to solemn explanations, convinced the heart if not the mind of the king; and he forgave—­he excused, and he trusted.  “I am of your opinion,” said he to his minister, yet a prey to the emotion of this scene, “that the Duc d’Orleans really regrets his past errors, and that he will do all in his power to repair the evil he has done, and in which perhaps he has not had so great a share as we believed.”

The prince left the king’s apartments reconciled with himself, and more than ever resolved to withdraw himself from the factious party.  It had cost him but little to sacrifice his ambition, for he had none; and his popularity of her own accord had quitted him for other men of inferior rank and station than his own, and he could only hope to find security and an honourable refuge at the foot of the throne, to which he was alike guided by inclination and duty.  Louis XVI. as a man had far more influence over him than as a king, but the adulation and resentment of the court ruined all.

The Sunday following this reconciliation, the Duc d’Orleans presented himself at the Tuileries to pay his respects to the king and queen.  It was the day and hour of the grandes receptions, and crowds of courtiers thronged the courts, the staircases, the corridors, some hoping that fortune might yet be propitious; others, come from the provinces to the court of their unfortunate master, drawn thither