with those free institutions and that recognition
of popular rights which are the glory of America, but he also wished to
protect the king and queen from outrage and insult; and a storm of
popular fury had now risen which he knew not how to control or to guide.
He, however, resolved to do all in his power to protect the royal
family, and to watch the progress of events with the hope of
establishing constitutional liberty and a constitutional throne over
France.

The palace was now guarded, by command of the Assembly, with a degree of
rigor unknown before. The iron gates of the courts and garden of the
Tuileries were kept locked. A list of the persons who were to be
permitted to see the royal family was made out, and none others were
allowed to enter. At every door sentinels were placed, and in every
passage, and in the corridor which connected the chambers of the king
and queen, armed men were stationed. The doors of the sleeping
apartments of the king and queen were kept open night and day, and a
guard was placed there to keep his eye ever upon the victims. No respect
was paid to female modesty, and the queen was compelled to retire to her
bed under the watchful eye of an unfeeling soldier. It seems impossible
that a civilized people could have been guilty of such barbarism. But
all sentiments of humanity appear to have fled from France. One of the
queen's women, at night, would draw her own bed between that of the
queen and the open door, that she might thus partially shield the person
of her royal mistress. The king was so utterly overwhelmed by the
magnitude of the calamities in which he was now involved, that his mind,
for a season, seemed to be prostrated and paralyzed by the blow. For ten
days he did not exchange a single word with any member of his family,
but moved sadly about in the apathy of despair, or sat in moody silence.
At last the queen threw herself upon her knees before him, and,
presenting to him her children, besought him, for her sake and that of
their little ones, to rouse his fortitude. "We may all perish," she
said, "but let us, at least, perish like sovereigns, and not wait to be
strangled unresistingly upon the very floor of our apartments."

The long and dreary months of the autumn, the winter, and the spring
thus passed away, with occasional gleams of hope visiting their minds,
but with the storm of revolution, on the whole, growing continually more
black and terrific. General anarchy riote