t supervision, and
declaring them liable to instant banishment if they should venture to
exercise their functions in private. Another day it vented its wrath upon
the emigrants, summoning the Count de Provence by name to return at once
to France; and, with respect to the rest of the body, now very numerous,
declaring their conduct in being assembled on the frontier of the kingdom
in a state of readiness for war in itself an act of treason; and
condemning to death and confiscation of their estates all who should fail
to return to their native land before a stated day.

But in these decrees the advocates of violence had for the moment gone too
far--they had outrun the feelings of the nation. The emigrants, indeed,
neither deserved nor found sympathy in any quarter. The main body of them
was at this time settled at Coblentz, where their conduct was such that it
is hard to say whether it were more offensive to their country, more
injurious to their king, or more discreditable to themselves. They could
not even act in harmony. The king's two brothers established rival courts,
with a mistress at the head of each. Madame de Balbi still ruled the Count
de Provence; Madame de Polastron was the presiding genius of the coterie
of the Count d'Artois. The two ladies, regarding each other with bitter
jealousy, agitated the whole town with their rivalries and wranglings, and
agreed in nothing but in their endeavors to excite some foreign sovereign
or other to make war upon their native land. It was in vain that Louis
himself first entreated them, and, when he found his entreaties were
disregarded, commanded his brothers to return. They positively refused
obedience to his order, telling him, in language which can only be
characterized as that of studied insult, that he was writing under
coercion; that his letter did not express his real views, and that "their
honor, their duty, even their affection for him, alike forbade them to
obey him.[11]" The queen could not command, but she wrote to them more
than one letter of most earnest entreaty, and, as the princes founded part
of their hopes on the co-operation of the Northern sovereigns, she wrote
also to the empress and to Gustavus, pressing both, and especially the
King of Sweden,[12] to restrain them; but they were too headstrong and
full of their own projects to listen to her entreaties any more than to
the king's commands, and did not even take the trouble to conceal their
negotiations