Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/584

570 upon a level with the president, without any deference to the throne; all this proclaimed but too loudly that the sovereignty itself was aimed at. The queen no longer saw any ground for hope from the interior of the country. The king wrote to the emperor; she told me that she would herself, at midnight, bring the letter which M. Gognelat was to bear to the emperor, to my room. During all the remainder of the day, the palace and the gardens of the Tuileries were prodigiously crowded; the illuminations were magnificent.

The king and the queen were requested to take an airing in their carriage in the Champs Elysées, escorted by the aides-de-camp and leaders of the Parisian army, the constitutional guard not being at that time organised. Many shouts of 'Vive le Roi!' were heard; but, as often as they terminated, one of the mob, who never quitted the door of the king's carriage for a single instant, exclaimed, with a stentorian voice, 'No, don't believe them: vive la nation! This ill-omened cry struck terror into the queen; she thought it not right, however, to make any complaint on the subject, and pretended not to hear the isolated croak of this fanatic, a base hireling, as if it bad been drowned in the public acclamation."

And thus the assembly, the so-called constitutional party, had given the last blow to the monarchy. They had degraded the sovereign to the lowest degree in the eyes of the nation; they had played into the hands of the furious republican party; and they were about to surrender the legislature and their new constitution into the very hands that were panting to destroy it, and to spill the blood of the king and queen, of these blind lawmakers, and one another. La Fayette and Bailly marched their national guards and their municipal officers once more to the Champ de Mars, on Sunday, the 18th of September, and there, amid the thunder of cannon, and of shouting multitudes, again proclaimed their devotion to the accomplished constitution. But, amid the rejoicings of the people, there were cries and other signs that they were rejoicing, not so much in the completion of the constitution, as in the fall of the monarchy. Amongst other significant symptoms, a shoe-maker, in the Rue St. Honoré, exhibited a transparency, with the words, "Vive le Roi! s'il est de honne foi!"—Long live the king, if he keeps faith!"

At This very time, the ladies and chief officers of the court were resigning their situations because the new constitution