"Who could have told Louis XIV., when in the midst of the splendors of his court he was present at the performance of _Athalie_, that the poet was predicting, through the mouth of Joad, the fate reserved for his great-grandson?" The royalist National Guards who were in the apartments considered the volunteer noblemen as companions in arms. They shook hands with each other amid cries of "Long live the King! Long live the National Guard!" But the troops outside did not share these sentiments. Jealous of the royalists assembled in the palace, they wanted to have them sent out. A regimental commander having come to make known this desire to Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette exclaimed: "Nothing can separate us from these gentlemen; they are our most faithful friends. They will share the dangers of the National Guard. They will obey us. Put them at the cannon's mouth, and they will show you how men die for their King." Meantime what had become of Pétion, whose business it was, as mayor, to defend the palace? Summoned to the Tuileries, he arrived there at eleven in the evening. As Louis XVI. said to him: "It seems there is a great deal of commotion?"--"Yes, sire," he replied, "the excitement is great." And he {280} enlarged upon the measures he claimed that he had taken, and his pretended haste to wait upon the King. In going out, he came face to face with M. de Mandat, who, as general-in-chief of the National Guard, was in command of all military forces. "Why," exclaimed he, "have the police refused cartridges to the National Guard when they have wasted them on the Marseillais? My men have only four charges apiece; some of them have not one. No matter; I answer for everything; my measures are taken, providing I am authorized, by an order signed by you, to repel force by force." Not daring to avow his complicity with the riot, Pétion signed the order demanded. Then he made his escape under pretext of inspecting the gardens, and fell amongst some royalist National Guards, who reprimanded him severely. He began to fear being kept at the Tuileries as a hostage, to guarantee the palace against the attempts of the populace, and went to the Assembly. It had adjourned at ten o'clock the evening before, but on account of the crisis had met again at two in the morning. The Assembly knew the gravity of the danger as well as the King did; but through a ridiculous and culpable point of honor, it affected not to recognize it, and devoted to the reading of a colonial report the moments it should have employed in saving that Constitution it had sworn to maintain. Pétion merely put in an appearance in the Hall of the Manège. But he took good care not to return to the Tuileries. At half-past three in the morning the {281} rolling of a carriage was heard from the palace. It was that of the mayor, going back empty. He had not dared to get into it, and had only sent his coachman an order