“Citizens,” said he, “watch closely around this palace:  the inviolable asylum of all plots against the nation, there a perverse queen lords it over an imbecile king and rears the cubs of tyranny.  Lawless priests there consecrate the arms of insurrection against the people.  They prepare the Saint Bartholomew of patriots.  The genius of Austria is there, hidden in the committees over which Antoinette presides; they correspond with foreigners, and by concealed means forward to them the gold and arms of France, so that the tyrants who are assembling in arms on your frontier may find you famished and disarmed.  The emigrants—­d’Artois and Conde—­there receive instructions of the coming vengeance of despotism.  A guard of Swiss stipendiaries is not enough for the liberticide schemes of the Capets.  Every night the good citizens who watch around this den see the ancient nobility entering stealthily and concealing arms beneath their clothes.  Can knights of the poignard be any thing but the enrolled assassins of the people?  What is La Fayette doing,—­is he a dupe or an accomplice?  Why does he leave free the avenues of the palace, which is only opened for vengeance or flight?  Why do we leave the Revolution incomplete, and also leave in the hands of our crowned enemy, still in the midst of us, the time to overcome and destroy it?  Do you not see that specie is disappearing and assignats are discredited?  What means the assemblings on your frontier of emigrants and armed bodies, who are advancing to enclose you in a circle of iron?  What are your ministers doing?  Why is not the property of emigrants confiscated, their houses burnt, their heads set at a price?  In whose hands are arms?  In the hands of traitors.  Who command your troops? traitors!  Who hold the keys of your strong places? traitors, traitors, traitors, everywhere traitors; and in this palace of treason, the king of traitors! the inviolable traitor, the king!  They tell you that he loves the constitution,—­humbug! he comes to the Assembly,—­humbug; the better he conceals his flight.  Watch! watch! a great blow is preparing, is ready to burst; if you do not prevent it by a counter-blow more sudden, more terrible, the people and liberty are annihilated.”

These declarations were not wholly void of foundation.  The king, honest and good, did not conspire against his people, the queen did not think of selling to the House of Austria the crown of her husband and her son.  If the constitution now completed had been able to restore order to the country and security to the throne, no sacrifice of power would have been felt by Louis XVI.:  never did prince find more innate in his character the conditions of his moderation:  that passive resignation, which is the character of constitutional sovereigns, was his virtue.  He neither desired to reconquer nor to avenge himself.  All he desired was, that his sincerity should be appreciated by the people, order re-established within and power without; that the Assembly, receding from the encroachments it had made on the executive power, should raise the constitution, correct its errors, and restore to royalty that power indispensable for the weal of the kingdom.