The queen with all sincerity adopted this tardy counsel, and arranged with Barnave all her measures, and all her foreign correspondence.  She neither said nor did any thing which could thwart the plans he had conceived for the restoration of royal authority.  “A feeling of legitimate pride,” said the queen when speaking of him, “a feeling which I am far from blaming in a young man of talent born in the obscure ranks of the third estate, has made him desire a revolution which should smooth the way to fame and influence.  But his heart is loyal, and if ever power is again in our hands, Barnave’s pardon is already written on our hearts.”  Madame Elizabeth partook of this regard of the king and queen for Barnave.  Defeated at all points, they had ended by believing that the only persons capable of restoring the monarchy were those who had destroyed it.  This was a fatal superstition.  They were induced to adore that power of the Revolution which they could not bend.

V.

The first acts of the king were too much imbued with the inspirations of Barnave and the Lameths for the royal dignity.  He addressed to the commissioners of the Assembly charged with interrogating him as to the circumstances of the 21st of June, a reply, the bad faith of which called for the smile rather than the indulgence of his enemies.

“Introduced into the king’s chamber and alone with him,” said the commissioners of the Assembly, “the king made to us the following declaration:—­The motives of my departure were the insults and outrages I underwent on the 18th of April, when I wished to go to St. Cloud.  These insults remained unpunished, and I thereupon believed that there was neither safety nor decorum in my staying any longer in Paris.  Unable to quit publicly, I resolved to depart in the night, and without attendants; my intention was never to leave the kingdom.  I had no concert with foreign powers, nor with the princes of my family who have emigrated.  My residence would have been at Montmedy, a place I had chosen because it is fortified, and that being close to the frontier, I was more ready to oppose every kind of invasion.  I have learnt during my journey that public opinion was decided in favour of the constitution, and so soon as I learnt the general wish I have not hesitated, as I never have hesitated, to make the sacrifice of what concerns myself for the public good.”

“The king,” added the queen, in her declaration, “desiring to depart with his children, I declare that nothing in nature could prevent my following him.  I have sufficiently proved, during two years, and under the most painful circumstances, that I will never separate from him.”

Not content with this inquiry into the motives and circumstances of the king’s flight, public opinion, much irritated, demanded that the hand of the nation should be extended even to the paternal authority, and that the Assembly should appoint a governor for the dauphin.  Eighty names, for the most part of obscure persons, were found in the division which was openly taken.  They were hailed with shouts of general derision.  This outrage to the king and father was spared him.  The governor subsequently named by Louis XVI., M. de Fleurieu, never entered upon his duties.  The governor of the heir to an empire was the gaoler of a prison of malefactors.