“After I had seen the Queen, the applicants were introduced, and, in my presence, a paper was handed by them to Her Majesty.  At the moment she received it, I was obliged to leave her for the purpose of watching an opportunity for their departure unobserved.  These precautions were necessary with regard to every person who came to us in the palace, otherwise the jealousy of the Assembly and its emissaries and the national guard of the interior might have been alarmed, and we should have been placed under express and open surveillance.  The confusion created by the constant change of guard, however, stood us in good stead in this emergency.  Much passing and repassing took place unheeded in the bustle.

“When the visitors had departed, and Her Majesty at one window of the palace, and I at another, had seen them safe over the Pont Royal, I returned to Her Majesty.  She then graciously handed me the paper which they had presented.

“It contained an earnest supplication, signed by many thousand good citizens, that the King and Queen would sanction the plan of sending the Dauphin to the army of La Fayette.  They pledged themselves, with the assistance of the royalists, to rescue the Royal Family.  They, urged that if once the King could be persuaded to show himself at the head of his army, without taking any active part, but merely for his own safety and that of his family, everything might be accomplished with the greatest tranquillity.

“The Queen exclaimed, ’What! send my child!  No! never while I breathe!

[Little did this unfortunate mother think that they, who thus pretended to interest themselves for this beautiful, angelic Prince only a few months before, would, when she was in her horrid prison after the butchery of her husband, have required this only comfort to be violently torn from her maternal arms!

Little, indeed, did she think, when her maternal devotedness thus repelled the very thought of his being trusted to myriads of sworn defenders, how soon he would be barbarously consigned by the infamous Assembly as the foot-stool of the inhuman savage cobbler, Simon, to be the night-boy of the excrements of the vilest of the works of human nature!]

Yet were I an independent Queen, or the regent of a minority, I feel that I should be inclined to accept the offer, to place myself at the head of the army, as my immortal mother did, who, by that step, transmitted the crown of our ancestors to its legitimate descendants.  It is the monarchy itself which now requires to be asserted.  Though D’ORLEANS is actively engaged in attempting the dethronement of His Majesty, I do not think the nation will submit to such a Prince, or to any other monarchical government, if the present be decidedly destroyed.

“‘All these plans, my dear Princess,’ continued she, ’are mere castles in the air.  The mischief is too deeply rooted.  As they have already frantically declared for the King’s abdication, any strong measure now, incompetent as we are to assure its success, would at once arm the advocates of republicanism to proclaim the King’s dethronement.