“Kings ought to proceed in their career undisturbed by the cries of the people, even as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the baying of dogs.”  This maxim of the despotic sovereign of Russia was very inapplicable to the situation of a captive king.

Meanwhile the revolutionary party followed up its audacious enterprise in a determined manner, without meeting any opposition.  The advice from without, as well from Coblentz as from Vienna, made various impressions upon the members of the royal family, and those cabinets were not in accordance with each other.  I often had reason to infer from what the Queen said to me that she thought the King, by leaving all the honour of restoring order to the Coblentz party,—­[The Princes and the chief of the emigrant nobility assembled at Coblentz, and the name was used to designate the reactionary party.]—­would, on the return of the emigrants, be put under a kind of guardianship which would increase his own misfortunes.  She frequently said to me, “If the emigrants succeed, they will rule the roast for a long time; it will be impossible to refuse them anything; to owe the crown to them would be contracting too great an obligation.”  It always appeared to me that she wished her own family to counterbalance the claims of the emigrants by disinterested services.  She was fearful of M. de Calonne, and with good reason.  She had proof that this minister was her bitterest enemy, and that he made use of the most criminal means in order to blacken her reputation.  I can testify that I have seen in the hands of the Queen a manuscript copy of the infamous memoirs of the woman De Lamotte, which had been brought to her from London, and in which all those passages where a total ignorance of the customs of Courts had occasioned that wretched woman to make blunders which would have been too palpable were corrected in M. de Calonne’s own handwriting.

The two King’s Guards who were wounded at her Majesty’s door on the 6th of October were M. du Repaire and M. de Miomandre de Sainte-Marie; on the dreadful night of the 6th of October the latter took the post of the former the moment he became incapable of maintaining it.

A considerable number of the Body Guards, who were wounded on the 6th of October, betook themselves to the infirmary at Versailles.  The brigands wanted to make their way into the infirmary in order to massacre them.  M. Viosin, head surgeon of that infirmary, ran to the entrance hall, invited the assailants to refresh themselves, ordered wine to be brought, and found means to direct the Sister Superior to remove the Guards into a ward appropriated to the poor, and dress them in the caps and greatcoats furnished by the institution.  The good sisters executed this order so promptly that the Guards were removed, dressed as paupers, and their beds made, while the assassins were drinking.  They searched all the wards, and fancied they saw no persons there but the sick poor; thus the Guards were saved.