The officers of the Flanders regiment, received with anxiety in the town of Versailles, were fêted at the château, and even admitted to the queen's card tables. Endeavours were made to secure their devotion, and a banquet was given to them by the king's guards. The officers of the dragoons and the chasseurs, who were at Versailles, those of the Swiss guards, of the hundred Swiss, of the prevoté, and the staff of the national guard were invited. The theatre in the château, which was reserved for the most solemn fêtes of the court, and which, since the marriage of the second brother of the king, had only been used for the emperor Joseph II., was selected for the scene of the festival. The king's musicians were ordered to attend this, the first fête which the guards had given. During the banquet, toasts to the king and royal family were drunk with enthusiasm, while the nation was omitted or rejected. At the second course, the grenadiers of Flanders, the two bodies of Swiss, and the dragoons were admitted to witness the spectacle, and share the sentiments which animated the guests. The enthusiasm increased every moment. Suddenly the king was announced; he entered attired in a hunting dress, the queen leaning on his arm, and carrying the dauphin. Shouts of affection and devotion arose on every side. The health of the royal family was drunk, with swords drawn; and when Louis XVI. withdrew, the music played, "_O Richard! O mon roi! l'univers t'abandonne_." The scene now assumed a very significant character; the march of the Hullans, and the profusion of wine, deprived the guests of all reserve. The charge was sounded; tottering guests climbed the boxes, as if mounting to an assault; while cockades were distributed; the tri-coloured cockade, it is said, was trampled on, and the guests then spread through the galleries of the château, where the ladies of the court loaded them with congratulations, and decorated them with ribbons and cockades. Such was this famous banquet of the 1st of October, which the court was imprudent enough to repeat on the third. One cannot help lamenting its fatal want of foresight; it could neither submit to nor change its destiny. This assembling of the troops, so far from preventing aggression in Paris, provoked it; the banquet did not make the devotion of the soldiers any more sure, while it augmented the ill disposition of the people. To protect itself there was no necessity for so much ardour, nor for flight was there needful so much preparation; but the court never took the measure calculated to make its designs succeed, or else it only half took it, and, in order to decide, it always waited until there was no longer any time.