menaced, degraded!  I have seen the bonnet rouge on his head.  You are responsible for this to posterity!” They replied to him by ironical laughter and uproarious shouts.  “Would you imply that the bonnet of patriots is a disgraceful mark for a king’s brow?” said the Girondist, Lasource; “will it not be believed that we are uneasy as to the king’s safety?  Let us not insult the people by lending it sentiments which it does not possess.  The people do not menace either the person of Louis XVI. or the prince royal.  They will not commit excess or violence.  Let us adopt measures of mildness and conciliation.”  This was the perfidious lulling of Petion, and the Assembly was put to sleep by such language.

XXIV.

Petion himself could not for any length of time feign ignorance of the gathering of 40,000 persons in Paris since the morning, and the entry of this armed mob into the Assembly and the Maison of the Tuileries.  His prolonged absence recalled to mind the sleep of La Fayette on the 6th of October; but the one was an accomplice, and the other innocent.  Night approached, and might conceal in its shades the disorders and attempts which would go even beyond the views of the Girondists.  Petion appeared in the court-yard, amidst shouts of Vive Petion! They carried him in their arms to the lowest steps of the staircase, and he entered the apartment where for three hours Louis XVI. had been undergoing these outrages.  “I have only just learned the situation of your majesty,” said Petion.  “That is very astonishing,” replied the king, in a tone of deep indignation, “for it is a long time that it has lasted.”

Petion, mounted on a chair, then made several addresses to the mob, without inducing it to move in the least.  At length, being put on the shoulders of four grenadiers, he said, “Citizens, male and female, you have used with moderation and dignity your right of petition; you will finish this day as you began it.  Hitherto your conduct has been in conformity with the law, and now in the name of the law I call upon you to follow my example and to retire.”

The crowd obeyed Petion, and moved off slowly through the long avenue of apartments of the chateau.  Scarcely had the mass begun to grow perceptibly less, than the king, released by the grenadiers from the recess in which he had been imprisoned, went to his sister, who threw herself into his arms:  he went out of the apartment with her by a side door, and hastened to join the queen in her apartment.  Marie Antoinette, sustained until then by her pride against showing her tears, gave way to the excess of her tenderness and emotion on again beholding the king.  She threw herself at his feet, and clasping his knees, sobbed bitterly but not loudly.  Madame Elizabeth and the children, locked in each other’s arms, and all embraced by the king, who wept over them, rejoiced at finding each other as if after a shipwreck, and