Polastron was the presiding genius of the coterie of the Count d’Artois.  The two ladies, regarding each other with bitter jealousy, agitated the whole town with their rivalries and wranglings, and agreed in nothing but in their endeavors to excite some foreign sovereign or other to make war upon their native land.  It was in vain that Louis himself first entreated them, and, when he found his entreaties were disregarded, commanded his brothers to return.  They positively refused obedience to his order, telling him, in language which can only be characterized as that of studied insult, that he was writing under coercion; that his letter did not express his real views, and that “their honor, their duty, even their affection for him, alike forbade them to obey him.[11]” The queen could not command, but she wrote to them more than one letter of most earnest entreaty, and, as the princes founded part of their hopes on the co-operation of the Northern sovereigns, she wrote also to the empress and to Gustavus, pressing both, and especially the King of Sweden,[12] to restrain them; but they were too headstrong and full of their own projects to listen to her entreaties any more than to the king’s commands, and did not even take the trouble to conceal their negotiations with foreign powers, nor their object, which could be nothing but war.

It was impossible that such conduct steadily pursued by the king’s own brothers could be any thing but most pernicious to his cause.  It could not fail to excite suspicions of his own good faith.  It supplied the Jacobins with pretexts for putting fresh restraints on his authority; and it frightened even the Constitutionalists, since it was plain that civil war must ensue, with, very probably, the addition of foreign war also, if these machinations of the emigrants were not suppressed.

Still, these sweeping proscriptions of entire classes were not yet to the taste of the nation.  Petitions from the country, and even one from the department of the Seine, were presented to Louis, begging him to refuse his assent to the decree against the priests; and the feeling which they represented was so strong, and the reputation of some of the petitioners stood so high for ability and influence, that the ministers believed that he could safely refuse his sanction to both the votes.  Even without their advice he would have rejected the decree against the priests, as one absolutely incompatible with his reverence for religion and its ministers; and his conduct on this subject supplies one more striking parallel to the history of the great English rebellion; since there can hardly be a more precise resemblance between events occurring in different ages and different countries than is afforded by the resistance made by Charles to the last vote of the London Parliament against the bishops, and this resistance of Louis to the will of the Assembly on behalf of the priests, and by the fatal effect which, in each case, their conscientious and courageous determination had upon the fortunes of the two sovereigns.