out to incur, he adjourns the session at
half-past four in the afternoon.

What is going to happen? Will the armed citizens return peaceably to
their homes? Or, not content with their promenade to the Assembly,
will they make another to the palace of the Tuileries? What
preparations have been made for its defence? Ten battalions line the
terrace facing the palace. Two {195} others are on the terrace at the
water side, four on the side of the Carrousel. There are two companies
of gendarmes before the door of the Royal Court; four on the Place
Louis XVI., to guard the passage of the Orangery, opposite rue
Saint-Florentin. Here, there might have been serious means of defence.
But Louis XVI. is a sovereign who does not defend himself. Two
municipal officers, MM. Boucher-Saint-Sauveur and Mouchet, had just
approached him: "My colleagues and myself," said M. Mouchet to him,
"have observed with pain that the Tuileries were closed the very
instant the cortege made its appearance. The people, crowded into the
passage of the Feuillants, were all the more dissatisfied because they
could see through the wicket that there were persons in the garden. We
ourselves, Sire, were very much affected at seeing cannon pointed at
the people. It is urgent that Your Majesty should order the gates of
the Tuileries to be opened."

After hesitating slightly, Louis XVI. ended by replying: "I consent
that the door of the Feuillants shall be opened; but on condition that
you make the procession march across the length of the terrace and go
out by the courtyard gate of the Riding School, without descending into
the garden."

This was one of the King's illusions. While he was parleying with the
two municipal officers the armed citizens had passed in review before
the Assembly. They had just left the session hall by a door leading
into the courtyard. Once in this {196} courtyard, the intervention of
some municipal officers caused the entrance known as the Dauphin's
door, opposite the street of the same name, to be opened for them. It
was by this that they entered the Tuileries Garden, while it was the
wish of Louis XVI. that they should pass out through it from the
terrace of the Feuillants. There they are, then, in the garden, having
made an irruption there instead of continuing their route through rue
Saint-Honore. Here they come along the terrace in front of the palace,
on which several battalions of the National Guard are station