XIII.

The men, touched by these words, respectful even in their violence, hesitated, and seemed touched.  It is evident, by the expression of their features, by their tears, that they are wavering between their pity for so terrible a reverse of fortune and their conscience as patriots.  The sight of their king, who pressed their hands in his, of their queen, by turns suppliant and majestic, who strives by despair or entreaties to wring from them permission to depart, unmanned them.  They would have yielded had they consulted the dictates of their heart alone; but they began to fear for themselves the responsibility of their indulgence; the people will demand from them their king, the nation its chief.  Egotism hardened their hearts; the wife of M. Sausse, with whom her husband repeatedly exchanged glances, and in whose breast the queen hoped to find pity and compassion, was the least moved of any.  Whilst the king harangued the municipal authorities, the queen, seated with her children on her lap between two bales of goods in the shop, showed her infants to Madame Sausse.  “You are a mother, madame,” said the queen; “you are a wife; the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands—­think what I must suffer for these children, for my husband.  At one word from you I shall owe them to you; the queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom, more than life.”  “Madame,” returned the grocer’s wife unmoved, with that petty common sense of minds in which calculation stifles generosity, “I wish it was in my power to serve you; you are thinking of the king; I am thinking of M. Sausse.  It is a wife’s duty to think of her husband.”  All hope is lost when no pity can be found in a woman’s heart.  The queen, indignant and hurt, retired with Madame Elizabeth and the children into two rooms at the top of the house, and there she burst into tears.  The king, surrounded by municipal officers and national guard, relinquished all hope of softening them.  He repeatedly mounted the wooden staircase of the wretched shop; he went from the queen to his sister, from his sister to his children; that which he had been unable to obtain from pity she hoped to obtain from time and compulsion.  He could not believe that these men, who still showed something like feeling, and manifested so much respect for him, would persist in their determination of detaining him, and awaiting the orders of the Assembly.  At all events he felt certain that before the return of the couriers from Paris he should be rescued by the forces of M. de Bouille, by which he knew he was surrounded without the knowledge of the people.  He was only astonished that these succours should delay their appearance so long.  Hour after hour chimed, the night wore away, and yet they came not.

XIV.