by acts.  Give unquestionable proofs of your sincerity.  For instance, two important decrees have been passed, both deeply important for the security of the state, and the delay of your sanction excites distrust.  Be on your guard:  distrust is not very wide from hatred, and hatred does not hesitate at crime.  If you do not give satisfaction to the Revolution, it will be cemented by blood.  Desperate measures, which you may be advised to adopt to intimidate Paris, to control the Assembly, would only cause the development of that sullen energy, the mother of great devotions and great attempts (this was meant indirectly for Dumouriez, who had advised firm measures).  You are deceived, Sire, when the nation is represented to you as hostile to the throne, and to yourself.  Love, serve the Revolution, and the people will love it in you.  Deposed priests are agitating the provinces:  ratify the measures requisite to put down their fanaticism.  Paris is uneasy as to its security:  sanction the measures which summon a camp of citizens beneath its walls.  Still more delays, and you will be considered as a conspirator and an accomplice.  Just heaven! hast thou stricken kings with blindness?  I know that the language of truth is rarely welcomed at the foot of thrones:  I know, too, that it is the withholding the truth from the councils of kings which renders revolutions so often necessary.  As a citizen, and as a minister, I owe the truth to the king, and nothing shall prevent my making it reach his ear.  I demand that we should have here a secretary of council to register our deliberations.  Responsible ministers should have a witness of their opinions.  If this witness existed, I should not now address your majesty in writing.”

The threat was no less evident than the treachery of this letter; and the last sentence indicated, in equivocal terms, the odious use which Roland meant one day to make of it.  The magnanimity of Vergniaud was excited against this step of the powerful Girondist minister:  Dumouriez’s military loyalty was roused by it:  the king listened to the reading of it with the calmness of a man accustomed to put up with insult.  The Girondists were informed of it in the secret councils at Madame Roland’s, and Roland kept a copy to cover himself at the hour of his fall.

XVII.

At this moment secret understandings, unknown to Roland himself, were formed by the three Girondist chiefs, Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne and the chateau, through Boze, the king’s painter.  A letter, intended for the monarch’s perusal, was written by them.  The iron chest guarded it for the day of accusation.