As if to push the wretched monarch to extremities, the National Assembly passed two decrees which struck him to the heart. According to the first of {150} these, voted May 19, any ecclesiastic having refused the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, could be transported at the simple request of twenty citizens of the canton in which he resided. According to the second, voted June 8, a camp of twenty thousand federates, recruited from every canton of the realm, were to be assembled before Paris, in order, as was said in one of the preambles, "to take every hope from the enemies of the common weal who are scheming in the interior." They had counted too much on the King's patience. He could not resolve to sanction the two decrees, and banish the ecclesiastics whose behavior he honored. Dumouriez afflicted him still further, when, in entreating him to yield, he asked why he had sanctioned, at the close of 1790, the decree obliging the clergy to take oath to the civil constitution of the clergy. "Sire," said he, "you sanctioned the decree for the priests' oath, and it is to that your veto must be applied. If I had been one of your counsellors at the time, I would, at the risk of my life, have advised you to refuse your sanction. Now my opinion is that having, as I dare to say, committed the fault of approving this decree, which has produced enormous evils, your veto, if you apply it to the second decree, which may arrest the deluge of blood ready to flow, will burden your conscience with all the crimes to which the people are tending." Never had a sovereign's conscience been a prey to similar perplexities. Louis XVI. seemed crushed beneath an irresistible {151} fatality. The Tuileries, haunted night and day by the spectre of Charles I., assumed a dismal air. At this period a sort of stupor characterized the countenance, the gait, and even the silence of the future victim of January 21. He no longer spoke; one might say he no longer thought. He seemed prostrated, petrified. A rumor got about that he had become almost imbecile through care and trouble, so much so that he did not recognize his son, but on seeing him approach, had asked: "What child is that?" It was added that while out walking he caught sight of the steeple of Saint Denis from the top of the hill, and cried out: "That is where I shall be on my birthday." He had been so calumniated, so misunderstood, so outraged, that not merely his crown but his existence had become an intolerable burden to him. His throne and his life alike disgusted him. He was no longer a King, but only the ghost of one.