The royal family descended from the carriage at the end of the terrace.  La Fayette received them from the hands of Barnave and Petion.  The children were carried in the arms of the national guard.  One of the members of the left side of the Assembly, the vicomte de Noailles, approached the queen with eagerness, and offered his arm.  The queen indignantly rejected it, and cast a look of contempt at the offer of protection from an enemy, then perceiving a deputy of the right, demanded his arm.  So much degradation might depress, but could not overcome her.  The dignity of the empire displayed itself unabated in the gesture and the heart of the woman.

The prolonged clamours of the crowd at the entrance of the king at the Tuileries announced to the Assembly its triumph.  The excitement suspended the sitting for nearly half an hour.  A deputy, rushing into the meeting, exclaimed that three gardes du corps were in the hands of the people, who would rend them in pieces.  Twenty commissaires went out at the moment to rescue them.  They entered some minutes afterwards.  The riot had been appeased by them.  They stated that they had seen Petion protecting with his person the door of the king’s carriage.  Barnave entered, mounted the tribune, covered as he was with the dust of his journey, and said, “We have fulfilled our mission to the honour of France and the Assembly; we have assured the public tranquillity and the safety of the king.  The king has declared to us that he had no intention of passing the boundaries of the kingdom. (Murmurs.) We advanced rapidly as far as Meaux, in order to avoid the pursuit of M. de Bouille’s troops.  The national guards and the troops have done their duty.  The king is at the Tuileries.”

Petion added, in order to flatter public opinion, that when the carriage stopped some persons had attempted to lay hands on the gardes du corps, that he himself had been seized by the collar and dragged from his place by the carriage door, but that this movement by the people was legal in its intention, and had no other object than to enforce the execution of the law which had ordered the arrest of the accomplices of the court.  It was decreed that information should be drawn up by the tribunal of the arrondissement of the Tuileries concerning the king’s flight, and that three commissioners appointed by the Assembly should receive the declarations of the king and queen.  “What means this obsequious exception?” exclaimed Robespierre.  “Do you fear to degrade royalty by handing over the king and queen to ordinary tribunals?  A citizen, a citoyenne, any man, any dignity, how elevated soever, can never be degraded by the law.”  Buzot supported this opinion; Duport opposed it.  Respect prevailed over outrage.  The commissioners named were Tronchet, Dandre, and Duport.

XXVII.