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The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney
page 22 of 791 (02%)
pervading all France, suddenly rushed into his closet, upon the
privilege of being one of the five or seven pairs de France(12)
who have that licence, and, with a strong and forcible eloquence,
declared nothing but his concession would save the nation from a
civil war; while his entering, unarmed, into the National
Assembly, would make him regarded for ever as the father and
saviour of his people, and secure him the powerful sovereignty of
the grateful hearts of all his subjects.

He succeeded, and the rest is public.

This incident has set all the Coblenz(13) party utterly and for
ever against the duke. He had been some time in extreme anguish
for the unhappy king, whose ill-treatment on the 20th of June
1792,(14) reached him while commandant at Rouen. He then first
began to see, that the monarch or the jacobins must inevitably
fall, and he could scarce support the prospect of ultimate danger
threatening the former. When the news reached him of the bloody
10th of August, a plan which for some time he had been forming,
of gaining over his regiment to the service of the king, was
rendered abortive. Yet all his officers except One had promised
to join in any enterprise for their insulted master. He had
hoped to get the king to

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Rouen under this protection, as I gather, though this matter has
never wholly transpired, But the king could not be persuaded to
trust any one. How should he?--especially a revolutionnaire?

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