to have instructions to be lavish of their master’s gold, the vile prince hoping that the result of the outbreak would be the assassination of his cousin, and his own elevation to the vacant throne.  In their speeches they gave Louis the name of Monsieur Veto, in allusion to the still legal exercise of his prerogative, by which he had sought to protect the priests; while the queen was called Madame Veto, though in fact she had finally joined Dumouriez in urging her husband to give his royal assent to the decree against them, not, as thinking it on any pretense justifiable, but as believing, with the general, in the impossibility of maintaining its rejection.  Yet nothing could more completely prove the absolute innocence and unimpeachable good faith of both king and queen than the act of his enemies in giving them this nickname; so clear an evidence was it that they could allege nothing more odious against them than the possession by Louis, in a most modified degree, of a prerogative which, without any modification at all, has in every country been at all times regarded as indispensable to, and inseparable from, royalty; and the exercise of it for the defense of a body of men of whom none could deny the entire harmlessness.

On the night of the 19th the appointed leaders of the different bands into which the insurgents were to be divided separated; the watch-word, “Destruction to the palace,” was given out; and all Paris waited in anxious terror for the events of the morrow.  Louis was as well aware as any of the citizens of the intended attack, and prepared for it as for death.  On the afternoon of the 19th he wrote to his confessor to desire him to come to him at once.  “He had never,” he said, “had such need of his consolations.  He had done with this world, and his thoughts were now fixed on Heaven alone.  Great calamities were announced for the morrow; but he felt that he had courage to meet them.”  And after the holy man had left him, as he gazed on the setting sun he once more gave utterance to his forebodings.  “Who can tell,” said he, “whether it be not the last that I shall ever see?” The Royalists felt his danger almost as keenly as himself, but were powerless to prevent it by any means of their own.  The Duke de Liancourt, who had some title to be listened to by the Revolutionary party, since no one had been more zealous in promoting the most violent measures of the first Assembly, pressed earnestly on Petion that his duty as mayor bound him to call out the National Guards, and so prevent the intended outbreak, but was answered by sarcasms and insults; while Vergniaud, from the tribune of the Assembly itself, dared to deride all who apprehended danger.