hts, but an almost
unconscious victim of fatality. Example full of startling lessons for
all leaders of state who adopt weakness as a system, and who, under
pretext of benevolence or moderation, no longer know how to foresee, to
will, or to strike!

{259}

XXV.

THE LAST DAYS AT THE TUILERIES.

During one of the last nights of July, at one o'clock, Madame Campan
was alone near the Queen's bed, when she heard some one walking softly
in the adjoining corridor, which was ordinarily locked at both ends.
Madame Campan summoned the valet-de-chambre, who went into the
corridor; presently the noise of two men fighting reached the ears of
Marie Antoinette. "What a position!" cried the unfortunate Queen.
"Insults by day and assassins by night!" The valet cried: "Madame, it
is a scoundrel whom I know; I am holding him."--"Let him go," said the
Queen. "Open the door for him; he came to assassinate me; he will be
carried in triumph by the Jacobins to-morrow."

People were constantly saying that the Faubourg Saint-Antoine was
getting ready to march against the palace. Marie Antoinette was so
badly guarded, and it was so easy to force an entrance to her apartment
on the ground-floor, opposite the garden, that Madame de Tourzel, her
children's governess, begged her to sleep in the Dauphin's room on the
first floor. The Queen was averse to this step, as she was {260}
unwilling to have any one suspect her uneasiness. But Madame de
Tourzel having shown her that it would be easy to keep the secret of
this change by using the Dauphin's private staircase, she ended by
accepting the proposal so long as the trouble should last. She was so
thoughtful of all those in her service that it cost her much to
incommode them in the least. Finally, she consented to use the bed of
the governess, and a pallet was laid for the latter every evening.
Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel slept on a sofa in an adjoining closet.
As no one in the house suspected that the Queen might have changed her
apartment for the night, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter took
precautionary measures. When the Queen had gone to bed, they rose, and
after making sure that the doors were locked, they shot the inside
bolts. "The closet I occupied served as a passage for the royal family
when they went to supper," says Mademoiselle de Tourzel, afterwards
Madame de Bearn, in her _Souvenirs de Quarante Ans_; "I went to bed
early; sometimes I pretended to be asleep