y when
Lafayette was with the queen, one of her majesty's ladies observed
(intending to be heard by the General's officers) that it made her
uneasy to think of her majesty's being shut up alone with a rebel and a
robber. An older and more prudent lady, Madame Campan, seeing the folly
of such a speech at a time when everything might depend on General
Lafayette's goodwill, reproved the person who had spoken; but it is
curious to see how much more she thought of the imprudence than of the
injustice of the speech. She observed that General Lafayette was
certainly a rebel: but that an officer who commanded forty thousand men,
the capital, and a large extent of country, should be called a chieftain
rather than a robber. One would think this was little enough to say in
favour of such a man as Lafayette: yet the queen the next day asked
Madame Campan, with a mournful gravity, what she could have meant by
taking Lafayette's part, and silencing the other ladies because they did
not like him. When she heard how it was, the queen was satisfied: but
we, far from being satisfied, may learn from this how difficult it must
have been to help the royal family and court, while they thought and
spoke of the best men in the nation in such a way as this. In truth,
there were miserable prejudices and insults on both sides: and at this
distance of time, Lafayette, with his love of freedom, and his goodwill
towards all the sufferers of both parties, rises to our view from among
them all as a sunny hill-top above the fogs of an unwholesome marsh.

The next event in the royal family was the departure of the old
princesses. They got away in February; and, though stopped in some
places on their journey, crossed the frontiers in safety. They might
probably have remained secure enough in Paris; and their departure was
not on their own account, so much as that of the king. He could not
have attempted to fly while his aged aunts remained in the midst of the
troubles. When they were disposed of, he felt himself more free to go
or stay. The old ladies earnestly entreated the sweet princess
Elizabeth to go with them, representing to her how happy she might be at
Rome in the exercise of the religion to which she was devoted. But her
religion taught her that her duty lay, not where she could say her
prayers with the most ease and security, but where she could give the
most help and consolation. She refused ease and safety, and declared
her inten