them are scoundrels or madmen.  I alone see in the Revolution the king and the nation, and that which tends to separate them, ruins them both.  I seek to unite them, and it is for you to aid me.  If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in them, tell me instantly, and I will retire, and mourn in obscurity the fate of my country and your own.”  The queen was touched and convinced; the frankness of Dumouriez at once pleased and won her.  The heart of the soldier was a guarantee to her of the conduct of the statesman.  Firm, brave, and heroic, she preferred to have the weight of his sword in the councils of his king, rather than those politicians, and specious orators, who, nevertheless, bent before every blast of opinion or sedition; and an intimate understanding soon existed between the queen and the general.

The queen was for some time faithful to her promises, but the repeated outrages of the people again moved her, in spite of herself, to anger and conspiracy.  “See,” said she to the king before Dumouriez, one day, pointing to the tops of the trees in the Tuileries; “a prisoner in this palace, I do not venture to show myself at the windows that look on to the garden.  The crowd collected there, and who watch even my tears, hoot me.  Yesterday, to breathe the air, I showed myself at a window that looks at the court; an artillery-man on guard addressed the most revolting language to me.  ‘How I should like,’ added he, ’to see your head on the point of my bayonet!’ In this frightful garden I see on one side a man mounted on a chair, and vociferating the most odious insults against us, whilst he threatens, by his gestures, the inhabitants of the palace; on the other, the populace is dragging to the basin some priest or soldier, whom they overwhelm with blows and outrages, whilst, at the same time, and close to these terrible scenes, persons are playing at ball or walking about in the allees.  What a residence—­what a life—­what a people!” Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient.  But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner.  How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see in this indifferent and cruel nation a people worthy of empire and of liberty?

XIV.

When all his measures with the court were concerted, Dumouriez no longer hesitated to leap over the space that divided the king and the extreme party, and to give the government the form of pure patriotism.  He made overtures to the Jacobins, and boldly presented himself at their sitting the next day.  The chamber was thronged, and the apparition of Dumouriez struck the tribunes with mute astonishment.  His martial figure and the impetuosity of his conduct won for him at once the favour of the Assembly; for no one suspected that so much audacity concealed so much stratagem, and they saw in him only the minister who threw himself into the arms of the people, and every one hastened to receive him.