The queen, in her conversations with her friends, spoke of them with more bitterness than confidence. The king loudly complained of the disobedience of his brothers, and dissuaded from flight all those who demanded his advice; but his advice was as changeable as events; like all men balancing between hope and fear, he alternately bent and stood erect beneath the pressure of circumstances. His acts were culpable, but not his intentions; it was not the king who conspired, but the man, the husband, the father, who sought by foreign aid to ensure the safety of his wife and children; and he alone became criminal when all seemed desperate. The "tangled thread" of negotiation was incessantly broken off and renewed: that which was resolved yesterday was to-morrow disavowed; and the secret negotiators of these plots, armed with credentials and powers which had been recalled, yet continued to employ them, in spite of the king's orders, to carry on in his name those plans of which he disapproved. The prince de Conde, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d'Artois had each his separate line of policy and court, and abused the king's name in order to increase his own credit and interest. Hence arises the difficulty, to those who write the history of that period, of tracing the hand of the king in all these conspiracies, carried on in his name, and to pronounce either his entire innocence or his palpable treachery. He did not betray his country, or sell his subjects; but he did not observe his oaths to the constitution or his country. An upright man, but a persecuted king, he believed that oaths, extorted by violence and eluded through fear, were no perjuries; and he broke each day some of those to which he had bound himself, under the belief, doubtless, that the excesses of the people freed him from his oath. Educated with all the prejudices of personal sovereignty, he sought with sincerity amidst this chaos of parties, who disputed with each other the empire, to find the nation; and failing to discover the object of his search, he fancied he had the right to find it in his own person. His crime, if there be any in his actions, was less the crime of his heart than the crime of his birth, his situation, and his misfortunes. XIV.