ore its complete explosion; he advised his Majesty to go to
the Assembly, and there, in person, to demand the cahiers,

[Cahiers, the memorials or lists of complaints, grievances, and
requirements of the electors drawn up by the primary assemblies and sent
with the deputies.]

and to make the greatest sacrifices to satisfy the legitimate wishes of
the people, and not to give the factious time to enlist them in aid of
their criminal designs. Madame Adelaide had M. Foulon's two memorials
read to her in the presence of four or five persons. One of them, Comte
Louis de Narbonne, was very intimate with Madame de Stael, and that
intimacy gave the Queen reason to believe that the opposite party had
gained information of M. Foulon's schemes.

It is known that young Barnave, during an aberration of mind, since
expiated by sincere repentance, and even by death, uttered these atrocious
words: "Is then the blood now, flowing so pure?" when M. Berthier's son
came to the Assembly to implore the eloquence of M. de Lally to entreat
that body to save his father's life. I have since been informed that a
son of M. Foulon, having returned to France after these first ebullitions
of the Revolution, saw Barnave, and gave him one of those memorials in
which M. Foulon advised Louis XVI. to prevent the revolutionary explosion
by voluntarily granting all that the Assembly required before the 14th of
July. "Read this memorial," said he; "I have brought it to increase your
remorse: it is the only revenge I wish to inflict on you." Barnave burst
into tears, and said to him all that the profoundest grief could dictate.

CHAPTER II.

After the 14th of July, by a manoeuvre for which the most skilful factions
of any age might have envied the Assembly, the whole population of France
was armed and organised into a National Guard. A report was spread
throughout France on the same day, and almost at the same hour, that four
thousand brigands were marching towards such towns or villages as it was
wished to induce to take arms. Never was any plan better laid; terror
spread at the same moment all over the kingdom. In 1791 a peasant showed
me a steep rock in the mountains of the Mont d'Or on which his wife
concealed herself on the day when the four thousand brigands were to
attack their village, and told me they had been obliged to make use of
ropes to let her down from the height which fear alone had enabled her to
climb.

Versailles was