listened to his communications. They were to the effect that "the king
alike prayed and exhorted the _emigres_ not to cause the approaching war
to lose its appearance of power against power, by taking part in it, in
the name of the re-establishment of the monarchy. Any other line of
conduct would produce a civil war, endanger the lives of the king and
queen, destroy the throne, and occasion a general massacre of the
royalists. The king added, that he besought the sovereigns who had taken
up arms in his cause, to separate, in their manifesto, the faction of
the Jacobins from the nation, and the liberty of the people from the
anarchy that convulsed them; to declare formally and energetically to
the Assembly, the administrative and municipal bodies, that their lives
should be answerable for all and every attempt against the sacred
persons of the king, the queen, and their children; and to announce to
the nation that no dismemberment would follow the war, that they would
treat for peace with the king alone, and that in consequence the
Assembly should hasten to give him the most perfect liberty, in order to
enable him to negotiate in the name of his people with the allied
powers."

Mallet-Dupan explained the sense of these instructions with that
enlightened good sense, and that devoted attachment to the king that
marked him; he painted in the most lively colours the interior of the
Tuileries, and the terror to which the royal family was a prey.

The negotiators were moved almost to tears, and promised to communicate
these impressions to their sovereigns, and gave Mallet-Dupan the
assurance that the intentions of the king should be the measure of the
language which the manifesto of the coalition would address to the
French nation.

They did not however dissimulate their astonishment at the fact that the
language of the emigrant princes at Coblentz was so opposed to the views
of the king at Paris. "They openly manifest," said they, "the intention
of re-conquering the kingdom for the counter-revolution, of rendering
themselves independent, of dethroning their brother and proclaiming a
regency." The confidant of Louis XVI. left for Geneva after this
conference; whilst the emperor, the king of Prussia, the principal
princes of the confederation, the ministers, the generals, and the Duke
of Brunswick went to Mayence. Mayence, where the fetes were interrupted
by the councils, became for some days the head-quarters of the monarc