“When the royal party retired, they were followed by all the military to the very palace doors, where they sung, danced, embraced each other, and gave way to all the frantic demonstrations of devotedness to the royal cause which the excitement of the scene and the table could produce.  Throngs, of course, collected to get near the Royal Family.  Many persons in the rush were trampled on, and one or two men, it was said, crushed to death.  The Dauphin and King were delighted; but the Queen, in giving the Princesse Elizabeth and myself an account of the festival, foresaw the fatal result which would ensue; and deeply deplored the marked enthusiasm with which they had been greeted and followed by the military.

“There was one more military spectacle, a public breakfast which took place on the second of October.  Though none of the Royal Family appeared at it, it was no less injurious to their interests than the former.  The enemies of the Crown spread reports all over Paris, that the King and Queen had manoeuvred to pervert the minds of the troops so far as to make them declare against the measures of the National Assembly.  It is not likely that the Assembly, or politics, were even spoken of at the breakfast; but the report did as much mischief as the reality would have done.  This was quite sufficient to encourage the D’ORLEANS and Mirabeau faction in the Assembly to the immediate execution of their long-meditated scheme, of overthrowing the monarchy.

“On the very day following, Duport, De Lameth, and Barnave sent their confidential agent to apprise the Queen that certain deputies had already fully matured a plot to remove the King, nay, to confine Her Majesty from him in a distant part of France, that her influence over his mind might no farther thwart their premeditated establishment of a Constitution.

“But others of this body, and the more powerful and subtle portion, had a deeper object, so depraved, that, even when forewarned, the Queen could not deem it possible; but of which she was soon convinced by their infernal acts.

“The riotous faction, for the purpose of accelerating this denouement, had contrived, by buying up all the corn and sending it out of the country, to reduce the populace to famine, and then to make it appear that the King and Queen had been the monopolisers, and the extravagance of Marie Antoinette and her largesses to Austria and her favourites, the cause.  The plot was so deeply laid that the wretches who, undertook to effect the diabolical scheme were metamorphosed in the Queen’s livery, so that all the odium might fall on her unfortunate Majesty.  At the head of the commission of monopolisers was Luckner, who had taken a violent dislike to the Queen, in consequence of his having been refused some preferment, which he attributed to her influence.  Mirabeau, who was still in the background, and longing to take a more prominent part, helped it on as much as possible.