gan to speak. "I came here," said
he, "to prevent a great crime, and I think that I could be nowhere more
secure than amidst the representatives of the nation." Alas! the crime
will not be prevented, but only adjourned. Vergniaud occupied the
president's chair. "Sire," he replied, "you may count on the firmness
of the National Assembly. It knows its duties; its members have sworn
to die in defending the rights of the people and the constituted
authorities."

So they still called Louis XVI. Sire; presently they will call him
nothing but Louis Capet. They allow him to take an armchair near the
president; but in a few minutes they will find this place too good for
him. And it is the voice of this very Vergniaud who, a few hours from
now, will pronounce his deposition, and five months later his sentence
of death.

Hardly had the unhappy King sat down when Chabot, the unfrocked
Capuchin, claimed that a clause of the Constitution forbade the
Assembly to deliberate in presence of the sovereign. Under this
pretext his place was changed, and Louis XVI. with all his family was
shut up in the reporters' gallery, sometimes called the box of the
Logograph. This miserable hole, about six feet high by twelve wide,
was on a level with the last ranks of the Assembly, behind the
president's chair and the seats of the {301} secretaries. It was
ordinarily set apart for the editors, or rather for the stenographers
of a great newspaper which reported the proceedings, and which was
called the _Journal logographique_, or the _Logotachygraphe_, usually
abbreviated into the _Logographe_. Louis XVI. seated himself in the
front of the box, Marie Antoinette half-concealed herself in a corner,
where she sought a little shelter against so many humiliations. Her
children and their governess took places on a bench with Madame
Elisabeth and the Princess de Lamballe. Several noblemen, the latest
courtiers of misfortune, stood up behind them.

Roederer, who was at the bar, then made a report in the name of the
municipal department, in which he explained all that had taken place.
He declared that he had said to the soldiers and National Guard
detailed for the defence of the Tuileries: "We do not ask you to shed
the blood of your brethren nor to attack your fellow-citizens; your
cannons are there for your defence, not for an attack; but I require
this defence in the name of the law, in the name of the Constitution.
The law authorizes you, w