he guards was to be seen. The queen observed
to this lady that they should have to fly. There was no saying to what
lengths the rebellious people would go, she declared, and the danger
increased every day.

There was indeed no respite from apprehensions of danger. About a month
after, on the 13th of April, there was a good deal of agitation in
Paris, from the debates in the Assembly having been very warm, and such
as to make the people fear that the king would be carried away.
Lafayette promised the king that if he saw reason to consider the palace
in danger, he would fire a great cannon on a certain bridge. At night,
some accidental musket-shots were heard near the palace, and the king
mistook them for Lafayette's cannon. He went to the queen's apartments.
She was not there. He found her in the Dauphin's chamber, with Louis
in her arms. "I was alarmed about you," said the king. "You see," said
she, clasping her little son close, "I was at my post."

While thus suffering, and certainly not learning to love the people more
on this account,--while distrusting Lafayette, and knowing no one else
who could give them the knowledge and advice which would have been best
for them, the royal family were confirmed in their worst prejudices and
errors by letters which reached them from a distance. Those who wished
to write to them in their distress were naturally those who sympathised
most with them, and least with the people. One instance shows how
absurd and mischievous such a correspondence was. The Empress Catherine
of Russia wrote to the queen, "Kings ought to proceed on their course
without troubling themselves about the cries of the people, as the moon
traverses the sky without regard to the baying of dogs." Whether the
queen saw the folly of these words, and thought of the proper answer to
them,--that a king is a man, like those who cry to him for sympathy, but
the moon is not a dog,--we do not know; nor whether she perceived the
insolent wickedness of the sentence; but she saw the unfeeling absurdity
of writing this to a king and queen who were actually prisoners in the
hands of their subjects. If the king had been active, decided, and
equal to the dangers of the times, he would have made use of this winter
in Paris to go among his people, and learn for himself what was the
matter, what they wanted, and how much could be done for peace and good
government: and then this correspondence from a distance might hav