sole reward, the honour of kissing your hand.”  The Queen, her eyes suffused with tears, granted him that favour, and remained impressed with a favourable idea of his sentiments.  Madame Elisabeth participated in this opinion, and the two Princesses frequently spoke of Barnave.  The Queen also received M. Duport several times, but with less mystery.  Her connection with the constitutional deputies transpired.  Alexandre de Lameth was the only one of the three who survived the vengeance of the Jacobins.

[Barnave was arrested at Grenoble.  He remained in prison in that town fifteen months, and his friends began to hope that he would be forgotten, when an order arrived that he should be removed to Paris.  At first he was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but transferred to the Conciergerie, and almost immediately taken before the revolutionary tribunal.  He appeared there with wonderful firmness, summed up the services he had rendered to the cause of liberty with his usual eloquence, and made such an impression upon the numerous auditors that, although accustomed to behold only conspirators worthy of death in all those who appeared before the tribunal, they themselves considered his acquittal certain.  The decree of death was read amidst the deepest silence; but Barnave’a firmness was immovable.  When he left the court, he cast upon the judges, the jurors, and the public looks expressive of contempt and indignation.  He was led to his fate with the respected Duport du Tertre, one of the last ministers of Louis XVI. when he had ascended the scaffold, Barnave stamped, raised his eyes to heaven, and said:  “This, then, is the reward of all that I have done for liberty!” He fell on the 29th of October, 1793, in the thirty-second year of his age; his bust was placed in the Grenoble Museum.  The Consular Government placed his statue next to that of Vergniaud, on the great staircase of the palace of the Senate.—­“Biographie de Bruxelles.”]

The National Guard, which succeeded the King’s Guard, having occupied the gates of the Tuileries, all who came to see the Queen were insulted with impunity.  Menacing cries were uttered aloud even in the Tuileries; they called for the destruction of the throne, and the murder of the sovereign; the grossest insults were offered by the very lowest of the mob.

About this time the King fell into a despondent state, which amounted almost to physical helplessness.  He passed ten successive days without uttering a single word, even in the bosom of his family; except, indeed, when playing at backgammon after dinner with Madame Elisabeth.  The Queen roused him from this state, so fatal at a critical period, by throwing herself at his feet, urging every alarming idea, and employing every affectionate expression.  She represented also what he owed to his family; and told him that if they were doomed to fall they ought to fall honourably, and not wait to be smothered upon the floor of their apartment.