even attempted to stem the revolutionary tide. He came down
from the president's chair, and went to a desk to write the decree
which should give a legislative form to the will of the insurrection.
In virtue of this decree, which Vergniaud read from the tribune, and
which was unanimously adopted, the royal power was suspended and a
National Convention convoked. In reality this was a veritable
deposition, and yet the Assembly still hesitated to give the last shock
which should uproot the royal tree that had sheltered beneath its
branches so many faithful generations. It declared that in default of
a civil list, a salary should be granted to the King during his
suspension; that Louis XVI. and his family should have a palace, the
Luxembourg, for a residence, and that he should be appointed governor
of the Prince-royal.

Concerning this, Madame de Stael has remarked in her _Considerations
sur les principaux evenements de la Revolution francaise_: "Ambition
for power mingled with the enthusiasm of principles in the republicans
{318} of 1792, and several among them offered to maintain royalty if
all the ministerial places were given to their friends.... The throne
they attacked served to shelter them, and it was not until after they
had triumphed that they found themselves exposed before the people."
What the Girondins wanted was merely a change in the ministry; it was
not a revolution. Vergniaud felt that he had been distanced. When he
read the act of deposition, his voice was sad, his attitude dejected,
and his action feeble. Did he foresee that the King and himself would
die at the same place, on the same scaffold, and only nine months apart?

Louis XVI. listened to the invectives launched against him, and to the
decree depriving him of royal power, without a change of color. At the
very moment when the vote was taken, he bent towards Deputy Coustard,
who sat beside the box of the _Logographe_, and said with the greatest
tranquillity: "What you are doing there is not very constitutional."
Impassive, and speaking of himself as of a king who had lived a
thousand years before, he leaned his elbows on the front of the box,
and looked on, like a disinterested spectator, at the lugubrious
spectacle that was unrolled before him.

Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, was shuddering. So long as the
combat lasted, a secret hope had thrilled her. But when she saw them
bringing to the Assembly and laying on the table the jew