although some persons around the king thought otherwise.  The troops were assembled, and surrounded the National Assembly.  Paris imagined it was threatened, and rose en masse; the Gardes Francaises, who lived amongst the people, followed the stream, and the report was circulated that I had bribed this regiment with my gold.  I will frankly declare my opinion:  if the Gardes Francaises had acted differently, I should in that case have deemed they had been bought over; for their hostility against the people of Paris would have been unnatural.  My bust was earned with that of M. Necker on the 14th of July.  Why? because this minister, on whom every public hope reposed, was the idol of the nation, and because my name was amongst the list of those deputies of the Assembly, who, it was said, were to have been arrested by the troops summoned to Versailles.  Amidst all these events, so favourable to a factious man, what was my behaviour?  I withdrew from the eyes of the people:  I did not flatter their excesses, but retired to my house at Mousseaux, where I passed the night; and the next morning I went, unattended, to the National Assembly at Versailles.  At the fortunate moment when the king resolved to cast himself into the arms of the Assembly, I refused to form one of the deputation of members despatched to Paris to announce these tidings to the capital, for I feared lest some of the homages which the city owed to the king alone might be paid to me.  And such was again my conduct on the days of October; I again absented myself, not to add fresh fuel to the excitement of the people; and I only reappeared when calm again prevailed.  I was met at Sevres by the bands of straggling assassins, who bore back the bleeding heads of the king’s guards:  these men stopped my carriage, and fired on the postilion.  Thus I, who was the pretended leader of these men, narrowly escaped being their victim, and owed my safety to a body of the national guard, who escorted me to Versailles; and as I went to wait on the king I repressed the last murmurs of the people in the Cour des Ministres I signed the decree which declared the Assembly inseparable from the person of the king.  It was at this time that M. de La Fayette called on me, and informed me of the king’s desire that I should quit Paris, in order to afford no pretext for popular tumult.  Convinced now, that the Revolution was accomplished, and only fearing the troubles with which attempts might be made to fetter its onward progress, I unhesitatingly obeyed, only demanding the consent of the National Assembly to my departure; this they granted, and I left Paris.  The inhabitants of Boulogne, who had been worked upon by an intrigue which may be laid to my charge, but to which I was a stranger, since I would not yield to it, wished forcibly to detain me, and opposed my embarkation.  I confess I was much touched, but I did not yield to this violent manifestation of public favour, and I myself persuaded them to return to their allegiance.  Advantage