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Rh the doomed King led him to hesitate until the right moment had passed, and the plot was revealed. So the ministers turned back to the arts of statecraft in an endeavour to turn the tide. And it is interesting to observe that in this most critical time of all French history, it was to the American Minister they turned for advice.

On the 22d of July the King asked whether Morris would take charge of the royal papers and the royal money, and on the 24th, de Monciel appeared at the embassy with 547,000 livres. Years afterward in Vienna the ambassador handed a portion of this sum to the Duchesse d'Angoulême—all that was left of the princely inheritance of the Bourbon dynasty to the daughter of Louis XVI.

By this time the King had become hardly more than a figurehead, a prisoner in his own palace. The Revolutionists had their minions in the cabinet, their brigands in the street, and their spies at every keyhole. At the risk of his life, Morris, at this juncture, undertook the