s, that a single man, taking the place of the Assembly,
and the whole nation, thus assumed. He, on his private authority and the
right of his civic foresight, struck at the liberty and perhaps the life
of the lawful ruler of the nation. This order led Louis XVI. to the
scaffold, for it restored to the people the victim who had escaped
their clutches. "Fortunately for him," he writes in his Memoirs, after
the atrocities committed on these august victims, "fortunately for him,
their arrest was not owing to his orders, but to the accident of being
recognised by a post-master, and to their ill arrangements." Thus the
citizen ordered that which the man trembled to see fulfilled; and tardy
sensibility protested against patriotism.

Quitting the Tuileries, La Fayette went to the Hotel de Ville, on
horseback. The quays were crowded with persons whose anger vented itself
in reproaches against him, which he supported with the utmost apparent
serenity. On his arrival at the Place de Greve, almost unattended, he
found the duke d'Aumont, one of his officers, in the hands of the
populace, who were on the point of massacring him; and he instantly
mingled with the crowd, who were astonished at his audacity, and rescued
the duke d'Aumont. He thus recovered by courage the dominion, which he
would have lost (and with it his life) had he hesitated.

"Why do you complain?" he asked of the crowd. "Does not every citizen
gain twenty sous by the suppression of the civil list? If you call the
flight of the king a misfortune, by what name would you then denominate
a counter-revolution that would deprive you of liberty?" He again
quitted the Hotel de Ville with an escort, and directed his steps with
more confidence towards the Assembly. As he entered the chamber, Camus,
near whom he seated himself, rose indignantly: "No uniforms here," cried
he; "in this place we should behold neither arms nor uniforms." Several
members of the left side rose with Camus, exclaiming to La Fayette,
"Quit the chamber!" and dismissing with a gesture the intimidated
general. Other members, friends of La Fayette, collected round him, and
sought to silence the threatening vociferations of Camus. M. de La
Fayette at last obtained a hearing at the bar. After uttering a few
common places about liberty and the people, he proposed that M. de
Gouvion, his second in command, to whom the guard of the Tuileries had
been intrusted, should be examined by the Assembly. "I will answe