ught
him to the very door of the council chamber, and that he flinched,
with the regency within reach of his hand. When the National Guard
arrived, his chances vanished.

Lafayette never was able to prove the Duke's complicity in the crime
of that night. When the Duke asked him what evidence he had, he
replied that if he had had evidence he would have sent him for trial;
but that he had enough reason for suspicion to require that he should
leave the country. Thrice the Duke, forcibly encouraged by Mirabeau,
refused to go. Thrice the general insisted, and the Duke started for
England. Mirabeau exclaimed that he would not have him for a lackey. A
long inquiry was held, and ended in nothing. The man who knew those
times best, Roederer afterwards assured Napoleon that, if there was an
Orleanist conspiracy, Orleans himself was not in it.

The women who invaded Versailles were followed by groups of men of the
same description as those who committed the atrocities which followed
the fall of the Bastille. As night fell they became formidable,
skirmished with the guard, and tried to make their way into the
Palace. At first, when his captains asked for orders to disperse the
crowd, Lewis, against the advice of his sister, replied that he did
not make war on women. But the men were armed, and evidently
dangerous. The command, at Versailles, was in the hands of d'Estaing,
the admiral of the American war, who at this critical moment showed no
capacity. He refused to let his men defend themselves, and ordered
them to withdraw. St. Priest grew impatient. Much depended on their
having repressed the riot without waiting to be rescued by the army of
Paris. He summoned the admiral to repel force by force. D'Estaing
replied that he waited the king's orders. The king gave none. The
minister then said: "When the king gives no orders, a general must
judge and act for himself." Again the king was silent. Later, the same
day, he adopted the words of St. Priest, and made them his own. He
said that the Count d'Estaing ought to have acted on his own
responsibility. No orders are needed by a man of spirit, who
understands his duty. It was the constant wish of Lewis XVI. to be in
the hands of stronger men, who would know how to save him in spite of
himself.

Mounier had obtained his unqualified assent to the Rights of Man, and
urged him to seize the moment to take refuge in some faithful
province. It was the dangerous, but the honourable course,