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 The First French Republic 439 I trust that your Majesty will approve my ideas, and that you will maintain the most absolute secrecy about the propo- sition I am making to you. You will easily understand that the circumstances in which I find myself force me to ob- serve the greatest caution. That is why no one but the baron of Breteuil is informed of my plans, and your Majesty may therefore communicate to him anything you wish. . . . Your good brother, Louis. The king not unnaturally refused to sanction the edicts which the Assembly directed against the emi- grant nobles, but he wrote to his brothers expostulating with them for increasing his unpopularity by their im- politic language and their intrigues with foreign powers. On October 31, on motion of the Girondist, Isnard, the Assembly bluntly ordered the king's older brother, the count of Provence, to return to France on pain of losing all rights to the regency. Louis Stanislas Xavier, Prince of France : The National Assembly requires you in virtue of the French constitution, title III, chapter ii, section 3, article 2, to return to the kingdom within a period of two months from to-day, failing which you will, after the expiration of the said period, lose your contingent right to the regency. On December 6 the count published the above order in Coblenz (the Emigres' center of activity), with the following counter-proclamation of his own. Members of the French Assembly, calling itself National: Sanity requires you, in virtue of title I, chapter i, section 1, article 1, of the imprescriptible laws of common sense, to return to yourselves within a period of two months from to-day, failing which you will, after the expiration of the said period, be regarded as having lost your right to be 408. The count of Provence summoned back to France ; and his impudent reply to the Assembly.