house or elsewhere; it would have been midnight before the Assembly could
have been summoned and couriers sent off to have the royal family stopped;
but the latter would have been six or seven hours in advance, as they
would have started at six leagues' distance from Paris; and at this period
travelling was not yet impeded in France.

The Queen approved of this plan; but I did not venture to interrogate her,
and I even thought if it were put in execution she would leave me in
ignorance of it. One evening in the month of June the people of the
Chateau, finding the King did not return by nine o'clock, were walking
about the courtyards in a state of great anxiety. I thought the family,
was gone, and I could scarcely breathe amidst the confusion of my good
wishes, when I heard the sound of the carriages. I confessed to the Queen
that I thought she had set off; she told me she must wait until Mesdames
the King's aunts had quitted France, and afterwards see whether the plan
agreed with those formed abroad.




CHAPTER IV.


There was a meeting at Paris for the first federation on the 14th of July,
1790, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille. What an astonishing
assemblage of four hundred thousand men, of whom there were not perhaps
two hundred who did not believe that the King found happiness and glory in
the order of things then being established. The love which was borne him
by all, with the exception of those who meditated his ruin, still reigned
in the hearts of the French in the departments; but if I may judge from