In the evening one of the queen’s women moved her bed between that of her mistress and the open door of the apartment, that she might thus conceal her from the eyes of the sentinels.  One night the commandant of the guard, who watched between the two doors, seeing that this woman was asleep, and the queen was awake, ventured to approach the couch of his royal mistress, and gave her in a low tone some information and advice as to her situation.  This conversation aroused the sleeping attendant, who, alarmed at seeing a man in uniform close to the royal bed, was about to call aloud, when the queen desired her to be silent, saying, “Do not alarm yourself; this is a good Frenchman, who is mistaken as to the intentions of the king and myself, but whose conversation betokens a sincere attachment to his masters.”

Providence thus made some of their persecutors to convey some consolation to the victims.  The king, so resigned, so unmoved, was bowed for a moment beneath the weight of so many troubles—­so much humiliation.  Such was his mental occupation, that he remained for ten days without exchanging a word with one of his family.  His last struggle with misfortune seemed to have exhausted his strength.  He felt himself vanquished, and desired, it would almost seem, to die by anticipation.  The queen, throwing herself at his feet, and presenting to him his children, forced him to break this mournful silence.  “Let us,” she exclaimed, “preserve all our fortitude, in order to sustain this long struggle with fortune.  If our destruction be inevitable, there is still left to us the choice of how we will perish; let us perish as sovereigns, and do not let us wait without resistance, and without vengeance, until they come and strangle us on the very floor of our own apartments!” The queen had the heart of a hero; Louis XVI. had the soul of a sage; but the genius which combines wisdom with valour was wanting to both:  the one knew how to struggle—­the other knew how to submit—­neither knew how to reign.

XXVIII.

The effect of this flight, had it succeeded, would have wholly changed the aspect of the Revolution.  Instead of having in the king, captive in Paris, an instrument and a victim, the Revolution would have had in an emancipated king, an enemy or a mediator; instead of being an anarchy, she would have had a civil war; instead of having massacres, she would have gained victories; she would have triumphed by arms, and not by executions.

Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on a chance!  And yet this was not a chance.  Drouet was the means of the king’s destruction:  if he had not recognised the monarch from his resemblance with his portrait on the assignats—­if he had not rode with all speed, and reached Varennes before the carriages, in two hours more the king and his family must have been saved.  Drouet, this obscure son of a post-master, sauntering and idle