Meanwhile the end was approaching. Faithful royalists still proposed schemes of flight to Louis XVI. Bertrand de Molleville, who is so ill disposed toward Madame de Staël, says concerning this: "There was nobody, even to Madame de Staël, who, either in the hope of being pardoned the injury her intrigues had done the King, or else through her continual need of intrigue, had not invented some plan of escape for His Majesty." Louis XVI. declined them all. He would owe nothing to Lafayette. He relied on the money he had given to Danton and other demagogues, and hoped that the {274} insurrectionary bands would be repulsed by the royalists of the National Guard and the Swiss regiment. August 8th, in the evening, this fine regiment left its Courbevoie barracks and arrived at the Tuileries at daybreak next morning. Under various idle pretexts it had been deprived of its twelve pieces of artillery, and also of three hundred men who had been given the commission, true or false as may be, to watch over the transportation of corn in Normandy. Only seven hundred and fifty, officers and soldiers, remained; but all of them had said: "We will let ourselves be killed to the last man rather than fail in honor or betray the sanctity of our oaths." In company with a handful of noblemen, these were to be the last defenders of the throne. The fatal hour was approaching. The section of the Cordeliers had decided that if the Assembly had not pronounced the King's deposition by the evening of August 9th, the drums should beat the general alarm at the stroke of midnight, and the insurrection march against the Tuileries. The revolutionists were to carry out their plan, and the Swiss to keep their word. {275} XXVII. THE NIGHT OF AUGUST NINTH TO TENTH. The night was serene, the sky clear and sown with stars. The calmness of nature contrasted with the revolutionary passions that had been unchained. On account of the heat, all the windows of the Tuileries had been left open, and from a distance the palace could be seen illuminated as if for a fête. It had just struck midnight. The Revolution was executing the programme of the Cordeliers' section. The tocsin was sounding all over the city. Everybody named the church whose bell he thought he recognized. The people of the faubourgs were out of bed in their houses. The drums mingled with the tocsin. The revolutionists beat the general alarm, and the royalists the call to arms.