rival. He accused the prince of fomenting troubles which he felt himself
powerless to repress. It was asserted that the Duc d'Orleans and
Mirabeau had been seen mingled with groups of men and women, and
pointing to the chateau. Mirabeau defended himself by a smile of
contempt. The Duc d'Orleans proved his innocence in a more serious
manner. An assassination which should kill the king or queen would still
leave the monarchy, the laws of the kingdom, and the princes inheritors
of the throne. He could not mount to it except over the dead bodies of
five persons placed by nature between himself and his ambition. These
steps of crime could only have incurred the execrations of the nation,
and must have even wearied the assassins themselves. Besides, he proved
by numerous and undeniable witnesses that he had not gone to Versailles
either on the 4th or 5th of October. Quitting Versailles on the 3rd,
after the sitting of the National Assembly, he had returned to Paris. He
had passed the day of the 4th in his palace and gardens at Mousseaux. On
the 5th, he again was at Mousseaux; his cabriolet having broken down on
the boulevard, he had gone on foot by the Champs Elysees. He had passed
the day at Passy with his children and Madame de Genlis. He had supped
at Mousseaux with some intimate friends, and slept again in Paris. It
was not until the 6th, in the morning, that, informed of the events of
the previous evening, he had gone to Versailles, and that his carriage
had been stopped at the bridge of Sevres, by the mob carrying the
bleeding heads of the king's guard.[17] If this was not the conduct of a
prince of the blood, who flies to the succour of his king and places
himself at the foot of the throne, between the threatened sovereign and
the people, neither was it that of an audacious usurper who tempts
revolt by occasion, and at least presents to the people a completed
crime.

The conduct of this prince was but that of one who looks to a contingent
reversion: either that he would not receive the crown except by a
fatality of events, and without thrusting forth his hand to fortune, or
that he had more indifference than ambition for supreme power, or that
he would not place his royalty as a check upon the way of liberty; that
he sincerely desired a republic, and that the title of first citizen of
a free nation appeared to him greater than that of king.

VII.

However, a short time after the days of the 5th and 6th October, L