popularity, which escaped their hands just as they were about to ensure
it to him. The court counselled the resistance which it had only in its
dreams; the queen the courage she felt in her soul; intriguants,
corruption, the timid, flight; and in turns, and almost at the same
time, he tried all these expedients: not one was efficacious; the time
for useful resolutions had passed,--the crisis was without remedy. It
was necessary to choose between life and the throne. In endeavouring to
preserve the two, it was written that he should lose both.

When we place ourselves in imagination in the position of Louis XVI.,
and ask what could have saved him? we reply disheartened--nothing. There
are circumstances which enfold all a man's movements in such a snare,
that, whatever direction he may take, he falls into the fatality of his
faults or his virtues. This was the dilemma of Louis XVI. All the
unpopularity of royalty in France, all the faults of preceding
administrations, all the vices of kings, all the shame of courts, all
the griefs of the people, were as it were accumulated on his head, and
marked his innocent brow for the expiation of many ages. Epochs have
their sacrifices as well as their religions. When they desire to recast
an institution which no longer suits them, they pile upon the individual
who personifies this institution all the odium and all the condemnation
of the institution itself,--they make of this man a victim whom they
sacrifice to the time. Louis XVI. was this innocent sacrifice,
overwhelmed with all the iniquities of thrones, and destined to be
immolated as a chastisement for royalty. Such was the king.


XII.

The queen seemed to be created by nature to contrast with the king, and