XXIV. THE FÉTE OF THE FEDERATION IN 1792. The fête of the Federation, which was to be celebrated July 14, was awaited with anxiety. The federates came into Paris full of the most revolutionary projects. Anxiety and anguish reigned at the Tuileries. Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, who were to be present in the Champ-de-Mars, feared to be assassinated there. The Queen's importunities decided the King to have a plastron made, to ward off a poniard thrust. Composed of fifteen thicknesses of Italian taffeta, this plastron consisted of a vest and a large belt. Madame Campan secretly tried it on the King in the chamber where Marie Antoinette was lying. Pulling Madame Campan by the dress as far as possible from the Queen's bed, Louis XVI. whispered: "It is to satisfy her that I yield; they will not assassinate me; their plan is changed; they will put me to death in another way." When the King had gone out, the Queen forced Madame Campan to tell her what he had just said. "I had divined it!" she exclaimed. "He has said this long time that all that is going on in France is an imitation of the revolution in England under Charles I. I begin to dread {249} an impeachment for him. As for me, I am a foreigner, and they will assassinate me. What will become of my poor children?" And she fell to weeping. Madame Campan tried to administer a nervine, but the Queen refused it. "Nervous maladies," said she. "are the ailments of happy women; I no longer have them." Without her knowledge a sort of corset, in the style of her husband's plastron, had been made for her. Nothing could induce her to wear it. To those who implored her with tears to put it on, she replied: "If seditious persons assassinate me, so much the better; they will deliver me from a most sorrowful life."