aloud, when the queen desired her to be silent, saying,
"Do not alarm yourself; this is a good Frenchman, who is mistaken as to
the intentions of the king and myself, but whose conversation betokens a
sincere attachment to his masters."

Providence thus made some of their persecutors to convey some
consolation to the victims. The king, so resigned, so unmoved, was bowed
for a moment beneath the weight of so many troubles--so much
humiliation. Such was his mental occupation, that he remained for ten
days without exchanging a word with one of his family. His last struggle
with misfortune seemed to have exhausted his strength. He felt himself
vanquished, and desired, it would almost seem, to die by anticipation.
The queen, throwing herself at his feet, and presenting to him his
children, forced him to break this mournful silence. "Let us," she
exclaimed, "preserve all our fortitude, in order to sustain this long
struggle with fortune. If our destruction be inevitable, there is still
left to us the choice of how we will perish; let us perish as
sovereigns, and do not let us wait without resistance, and without
vengeance, until they come and strangle us on the very floor of our own
apartments!" The queen had the heart of a hero; Louis XVI. had the soul
of a sage; but the genius which combines wisdom with valour was wanting
to both: the one knew how to struggle--the other knew how to
submit--neither knew how to reign.

XXVIII.

The effect of this flight, had it succeeded, would have wholly changed
the aspect of the Revolution. Instead of having in the king, captive in
Paris, an instrument and a victim, the Revolution would have had in an
emancipated king, an enemy or a mediator; instead of being an anarchy,
she would have had a civil war; instead of having massacres, she would
have gained victories; she would have triumphed by arms, and not by
executions.

Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on
a chance! And yet this was not a chance. Drouet was the means of the
king's destruction: if he had not recognised the monarch from his
resemblance with his portrait on the assignats--if he had not rode with
all speed, and reached Varennes before the carriages, in two hours more
the king and his family must have been saved. Drouet, this obscure son
of a post-master, sauntering and idle that evening before the door of a
cottage, decided the fate of a monarchy. He took the advice of no one
but him