arisian guard
was waiting for him. His departure caused equal grief and alarm to his
friends, notwithstanding the calmness he exhibited. The Queen restrained
her tears, and shut herself up in her private rooms with her family. She
sent for several persons belonging to her Court; their doors were locked.
Terror had driven them away. The silence of death reigned throughout the
palace; they hardly dared hope that the King would return? The Queen had
a robe prepared for her, and sent orders to her stables to have all her
equipages ready. She wrote an address of a few lines for the Assembly,
determining to go there with her family, the officers of her palace, and
her servants, if the King should be detained prisoner at Paris. She got
this address by heart; it began with these words: "Gentlemen, I come to
place in your hands the wife and family of your sovereign; do not suffer
those who have been united in heaven to be put asunder on earth." While
she was repeating this address she was often interrupted by tears, and
sorrowfully exclaimed: "They will not let him return!"

It was past four when the King, who had left Versailles at ten in the
morning, entered the Hotel de Ville. At length, at six in the evening, M.
de Lastours, the King's first page, arrived; he was not half an hour in
coming from the Barriere de la Conference to Versailles. Everybody knows
that the moment of calm in Paris was that in which the unfortunate
sovereign received the tricoloured cockade from M. Bailly, and placed it
in his hat. A shout of "Vive le Roi!" arose on all sides; it had not been
once uttered before. The King breathed again, and with tears in his eyes
exclaimed that his heart stood in need of such greetings from the people.
One of his equerries (M. de Cubieres) told him the people loved him, and
that he could never have doubted it. The King replied in accents of
profound sensibility:

"Cubieres, the French loved Henri IV., and what king ever better deserved
to be beloved?"

[Louis XVI. cherished the memory of Henri IV.: at that moment he thought
of his deplorable end; but he long before regarded him as a model.
Soulavie says on the subject: "A tablet with the inscription 'Resurrexit'
placed upon the pedestal of Henri IV.'s statue on the accession of Louis
XVI. flattered him exceedingly. 'What a fine compliment,' said he, 'if it
were true! Tacitus himself never wrote anything so concise or so happy.'
Louis XVI. wished to tak