The only resource of the Gironde, in its present situation, was the abdication of the king; Vergniaud, it is true, as yet only expressed himself ambiguously, but all the popular party attributed to Louis XVI. projects which Vergniaud had only expressed in the form of suppositions. In a few days, Brissot expressed himself more openly. "Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops, not because those troops want courage, or that our frontiers are badly fortified, and our resources scanty. No, it is in danger, because its force is paralysed. And who has paralysed it? A man--one man, the man whom the constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the kings of Hungary and Prussia; I say, the chief force of these kings is at the court, and it is there that we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike the dissentient priests throughout the kingdom. I tell you to strike at the Tuileries, that is, to fell all the priests with a single blow; you are told to prosecute all factious and intriguing conspirators; they will all disappear if you once knock loud enough at the door of the cabinet of the Tuileries, for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. The nation is the plaything of this cabinet. This is the secret of our position, this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."