interior or exterior, in order to recover his power. The omnipotence of
opinion had convinced him of the vanity of all the plans submitted to
him for crushing it. The momentary tranquillity of spirits after so many
shocks, the reception he had met with in the Assembly, the
Champ-de-Mars, in the theatre,--the freedom and honours restored to him
in his palace, had persuaded him that, if the constitution had some
fanatics, royalty had no implacable enemies in his kingdom. He believed
the constitution easy of execution in many of its provisions, and
impracticable in others. The government which they imposed on him seemed
to him as a philosophical experiment which they desired to make with
their king. He only forgot one thing, and that is, the experiments of a
people are catastrophes. A king who accepts the terms of a government
which are impossible, accepts his own overthrow by anticipation. A
well-considered and voluntary abdication is more regal than that daily
abdication which is undergone in the degradation of power. A king saves,
if not his life, at least his dignity. It is more suitable to majesty
royal to descend by its own will, than to be cast down headlong. From
the moment when the king is king no longer, the throne becomes the last
place in the kingdom.

Be this as it may, the king frankly declared to his ministers his
intention of legally executing the constitution, and of associating
himself unreservedly and without guile to the will and destiny of the
nation. The queen, by one of those sudden and inexplicable changes in
the heart of woman, threw herself, with the trust of despair, into the
party of the constitution. "Courage," she said to M. Bertrand de
Molleville, minister and confidant of the king: "Courage! I hope, with
patience, firmness, and perseverance, that all is not lost."

The minister of marine, Bertrand de Molleville, wrote, by the king's
orders, to the commandants of the ports a letter, signed by the
king:--"I am informed," he said, in this circular, "that emigrations in
the navy are fast increasing. How is it that the officers of a service
always so dear to me, and which has invariably given me proofs of its
attachment, are so mistaken at what is due to their country, to me, and
to themselves! This extreme step would have seemed to me less surprising
some time since, when anarchy was at its height, and when its
termination was unseen; but now, when the nation desires to return to
order and subm