Meanwhile the Assembly wavered, hesitated, and did nothing; the Girondins and Jacobins were fertile in devising plots, and active in carrying them out. One day, as if seized with a panic at some report of the strength of the Austrian and Prussian armies, the Assembly again passed a vote declaring the country in danger; on another, roused by a letter which a Madame Gouges, a daughter of a fashionable dress-maker, a lady of more notoriety than reputation, but who cultivated a character for philosophy, took upon herself to write to them, and still more by a curiously sentimental speech of the Bishop of Lyons, with the appropriate name of Lamourette,[5] the members bound themselves to have for the future but one heart and one sentiment; and for some minutes Jacobins, Girondins, Constitutionalists, and Royalists were rushing to and fro across the floor of the hall in a frenzy of mutual benevolence, embracing and kissing one another, and swearing an eternal friendship. They even sent a message to Louis to beg him to come and witness this new harmony. He came at once. With his disposition, it was not strange that he yielded to the illusion of the strange spectacle which he beheld. He shed tears of joy, declared the complete agreement of his sentiments with theirs, and predicted that their union would save France. They escorted him back to the Tuileries with cheers, and the very same evening, after a stormy debate, which was a remarkable commentary on the affection which they had just vowed to one another, they set him at defiance, insulting him by annulling some decrees to which he had given his assent, and passing a vote of confidence in Petion as mayor.
The Feast of the Federation, as it was called, passed off quietly. The king again recognized the Constitution before the altar erected in the Champ de Mars, and, as he drove back to the palace, the populace accompanied him the whole way, never ceasing their acclamations of "Vivent le roi et la reine![6]" till they had dismounted and returned to their apartments. Such a close of the day had been expected by no one. La Fayette, who seems at last to have become really anxious to save the lives of the king and queen, and to have been seriously convinced that they were in danger, had now formally opened a communication with the court. He concerted his plans with Marshal Luckner, and had learned so much wisdom from his recent failure that he now placed no reliance on any thing but a display of superior force. He accordingly proposed to Louis to bring up a battalion of picked men from his and the marshal's armies to escort him to the Champ de Mars; and, judging that, even if the feast should pass off without any fresh danger, the king could never be considered permanently safe while he remained in Paris, he recommended that on the next day, Louis, still under the protection of the same troops, should announce to the Assembly his departure for Compiegne, and should at once quit the capital for that town, to which trusty officers would in the mean time have brought up other divisions of the army in sufficient strength to set all disaffected and seditious spirits at defiance.
The plan was at all events well conceived, but it was declined. Louis did not apparently distrust the marquis's good faith, but he doubted his ability to carry out an enterprise requiring an energy and decision of which no part of La Fayette's career had given any indication; while the queen distrusted his loyalty even more than his capacity. One of those with whom she took counsel expressed his opinion of the marquis's real object by saying that he might save the monarch, but not the monarchy; and she replied that his head was still full of republican notions which he had brought from America, and refused to place the slightest confidence in him. We may suspect that she did not do him entire justice, and may rather believe, with Louis, that he was now acting in good faith; but, with a recollection of all that she had suffered at his hands, we can not wonder at her continued distrust of him.[A7]
But his was not the only plan proposed for the escape of the royal family. Bertrand de Moleville, though no longer Louis's minister, retained his undiminished confidence, and he had found a place which he regarded as admirably suited for a temporary retreat-the Castle of Gaillon, near the left bank of the Seine, in Normandy, the people of which province were almost universally loyal. It was within the twenty leagues from Paris which the Assembly had fixed for the limit of the royal journeys; while yet, in case of the worst, it was likewise within easy distance of the coast. An able engineer officer had pronounced it to be thoroughly defensible; and the Count d'Hervilly, with other officers of proved courage and presence of mind, undertook the arrangement of all the military measures necessary for the safe escort of the entire royal family, which they themselves were willing to conduct, with the aid of some detachments of the Swiss Guards; while the necessary funds were provided by the loyal devotion of the Duke de Liancourt, who placed a million of francs at his sovereign's disposal, and of one or two other nobles who came forward with almost equally lavish offerings. Louis certainly at first regarded the plan with favor, and, in the opinion of M. Bertrand, it would not have been difficult to induce him to adopt it, if the queen could have been brought over to a similar view.
Unhappily several motives combined to disincline her to it. The insurrection which the Girondins[8] were preparing had originally been fixed for the 29th of July; but, a few days before, M. Bertrand learned that it had been postponed till the 10th of August. This gave him time to mature his arrangements, all of which, as he reckoned, could be completed in time for the king to leave Paris on the evening of the 8th. But before that day arrived news had reached the court that the Duke of Brunswick, the Prussian commander-in-chief, had put his army in motion, and that he was not likely to meet any obstacle sufficient to prevent him from marching at once on Paris; a measure which, to quote the language of M. Bertrand, "the queen was too anxious to see accomplished to hesitate at believing in its execution.[9]" And at the same time some of the Jacobin leaders-Danton, Petion, and Santerre-had opened communications with the Government, and had undertaken for a large bribe to prevent the threatened outbreak. The money had been paid to them, and Marie Antoinette more than once boasted to her attendants that they were now safe, as having gained over Danton; placing the firmer reliance on this mode of extrication because it coincided with her belief that the mutual jealousy of the two parties would dispose one of them at least eventually to embrace the cause of the king, as their beat ally against the other. The result seems to show that the Jacobins only took the bribe the more effectually to lull their destined victims into a false security.
A third consideration, and that apparently not the weakest, was Marie Antoinette's rooted dislike of the Constitutionalist party. In their rants the Duc de Liancourt had taken his seat in the first Assembly; though, as he assured M. Bertrand, the king himself was aware that his object in so doing had been to serve his majesty in the most effectual manner; and he was also the statesman whose advice had mainly contributed to induce the king to visit Paris after the destruction of the Bastile, a step which she had always regarded as the forerunner and cause of some of the most irremediable encroachments of the Revolutionists. Even the duke's present devotion to the king's cause could not entirely efface from her mind the impression that he was not in his heart friendly to the royal authority. She urged these arguments on the king. The last probably weighed with him but little: the two former he felt as strongly as the queen herself; and he delayed his decision, sending word to M. Bertrand that he had resolved to defer his departure "till the last extremity.[10]" His faithful servant was in amazement. "When," he exclaimed, "was the last extremity to be looked for, if it had not already come?" But his astonishment was turned to absolute despair when the next day M. Montmorin informed him that the project had been entirely given up, the queen herself remarking "that M. Bertrand overlooked the circumstance that he was throwing them altogether into the hands of the Constitutionalists."