"General La Fayette's journey is a revolutionary orgy, which is not so much the result of patriotic enthusiasm as of various combinations of party spirit. The Comité directeur and Masonic Lodges called them together, these parties being desirous of fêting the Revolution, in the person of the general, who, since 1789, has preached and defended similar principles in short, it is the actual Revolution elevated to high places." It is now necessary for us to say a few words about the tour of Charles X. in Alsace; it will balance that of General La Fayette. Besides, any events that lead up to great catastrophes in history are of peculiar interest. Contrary to that of La Fayette, who, as we have seen, had excited the enthusiasm of the people wherever he went, the king's journey, following the usual custom of princely journeys, had only displayed an official and factitious loyalty, spread over the real hatred below, as the folds of a beautiful cloth cover up a worm-eaten table. It may be said to have done far more, it had brought to light some of those sinister omens which foretell great disasters. They had passed through Varennes (and one asks by what unlucky chance or forgetfulness had that town, fatal to the cause of monarchy, been chosen for the king's route?), and at Varennes they stopped to change horses, at the head of the bridge, at the entrance of the archway, exactly at the same spot where Louis XVI., the Queen, Madame Élisabeth, the Children of France and their governess, Madame de Tourzel, had been compelled to stop by Drouet's threats, to get down from the coach and to follow M. Sausse into his grocer's shop, which was to serve them as the antechamber to the Temple. Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, who had been one of the party on that first journey, was with the second. When she recognised the fatal spot, after a lapse of thirty-eight years, she shuddered, uttered a cry and would not allow the carriage time for a relay, but commanded the postillions to go on to the next posting-place. This time the postillions obeyed; they had refused on 21 June 1791. They did not, however, set off fast enough to prevent overhearing a few injudicious words which the duchess let fall; words that, borne on the winds of hatred, preceded her throughout the journey, to such effect that, when Charles X. and his family reached Nancy, the chief of Royalist towns, and showed themselves on the palace balcony to bow to the people, hissings were heard above the cheers, each time the king saluted: the people treated their princes just as one treats actors who have played their parts badly. The Duc d'Orléans lost sight of nothing; like a hunter on the watch for his prey, he lay in wait to take advantage of all the errors made by the royal quarry he was hunting down. Thus I, too, who was on a footing of intimacy in his household, could, so to speak, feel the pulse of his ambition beating,