t of my mission. They asked me if I had been paid for the loss I
sustained. I told them I had not, but I was promised that it should be
settled.

"Settled!" said one of the wretches. "Get the money as soon as you can.
Do not trust to promises of its being settled. They will all be settled
themselves soon!"

The next day, on going to the palace, I found the Princesse de Lamballe
in the greatest agitation, from the accounts the Court had just received
of the murder of a man belonging to Arthur Dillon, and of the massacres
at Nantes.

"The horrid prints, pamphlets, and caricatures," cried she, "daily
exhibited under the very windows of the Tuileries, against His Majesty,
the Queen, the Austrian party, and the Coblentz party, the constant
thwarting of every plan, and these last horrors at Nantes, have so
overwhelmed the King that he is nearly become a mere automaton. Daily
and nightly execrations are howled in his ears. Look at our boasted
deliverers! The poor Queen, her children, and all of us belonging to the
palace, are in danger of our lives at merely being seen; while they by
whom we have been so long buoyed up with hope are quarrelling amongst
themselves for the honour and etiquette of precedency, leaving us to the
fury of a race of cannibals, who know no mercy, and will have destroyed
us long before their disputes of etiquette can be settled."

The utterance of Her Highness while saying this was rendered almost
inarticulate by her tears.

"What support against internal disorganization," continued she, "is to be
expected from so disorganized a body as the present army of different
nations, having all different interests?"

I said there was no doubt that the Prussian army was on its march, and
would soon be joined by that of the Princes and of Austria.

"You speak as you wish, mia cara Inglesina, but it is all to no purpose.
Would to God they had never been applied to, never been called upon to
interfere. Oh, that Her Majesty could have been persuaded to listen to
Dumourier and some other of the members, instead of relying on succours
which, I fear, will never enter Paris in our lifetime! No army can
subdue a nation; especially a nation frenzied by the recent recovery of
its freedom and independence from the shackles of a corrupt and weak
administration. The King is too good; the Queen has no equal as to
heart; but they have both been most grossly betrayed. The royalists on
one side, the constitutio