and of shutting up the queen in a convent.  In the nights of October, when it was proposed to the Assembly to go and protect the king by its presence, they declared it was beneath their dignity to do so.  The king’s aunts have been arrested, when from religious motives they wished to journey to Rome.  My conscience has been equally outraged; even my religious principles have been constrained:  when after my illness I wished to go to St. Cloud, to complete my convalescence, it was feared that I was going to this residence to perform my pious duties with priests who had not taken the oaths; my horses were unharnessed, and I was compelled by force to return to the Tuileries.  M. de La Fayette himself could not ensure obedience to the law, or the respect due to the king.  I have been forced to send away the very priests of my chapels, and even the adviser of my conscience.  In such a situation, all that is left me is to appeal to the justice and affection of my people, to take refuge from the attacks of the factions and the oppression of the Assembly and the clubs, in a town of my kingdom, and to resolve there, in perfect freedom, on the modifications the constitution requires; of the restoration of our holy religion; of the strengthening of the royal power, and the consolidation of true liberty.”

The Assembly, who had several times interrupted the reading of this manifesto by bursts of laughter or murmurs of indignation, proceeded with disdain to the order of the day, and received the oaths of the generals employed at Paris.  Numerous deputations from Paris and the neighbouring departments came successively to the bar to assure the Assembly that it would ever be considered as the rallying point by all good citizens.

The same evening the clubs of the Cordeliers and the Jacobins caused the motions for the king’s dethronement to be placarded about.  The club of the Cordeliers declared in one of its placards that every citizen who belonged to it had sworn individually to poignard the tyrants.  Marat, one of its members, published and distributed in Paris an incendiary proclamation.  “People,” said he, “behold the loyalty, the honour, the religion of kings.  Remember Henry III. and the duke de Guise:  at the same table as his enemy did Henry receive the sacrament, and swear on the same altar eternal friendship; scarcely had he quitted the temple than he distributed poignards to his followers, summoned the duke to his cabinet, and there beheld him fall pierced with wounds.  Trust then to the oaths of princes!  On the morning of the 19th, Louis XVI. laughed at his oath, and enjoyed beforehand the alarm his flight would cause you.  The Austrian woman has seduced La Fayette last night.  Louis XVI., disguised in a priest’s robe, fled with the dauphin, his wife, his brother, and all the family.  He now laughs at the folly of the Parisians, and ere long he will swim in their blood.  Citizens, this escape has been long prepared by the traitors