The crowd grew more and more dense as the carriages entered the garden of the Tuileries, and the way became so obstructed by the throng that it was with no little difficulty that a passage was secured. As soon as the carriages arrived at the door of the palace, near the end of the terrace, the royal family alighted and passed through a double file of the National Guard drawn up for their protection. In this hour of misfortune, those who had been most hostile to the despotism of the court vied with each other in their endeavors to protect fallen royalty from indignities. The Viscount of Noailles, a warm friend of reform, and a humane, magnanimous man, approached the queen, who was the last to alight from the carriage, and offered her his arm to conduct her into the palace. The queen, with imprudent but perhaps pardonable pride, haughtily rejected the aid of the friend of the people, and, seeing one of the partisans of the court near by, asked his arm. The hall of the Assembly, since destroyed, looked out upon the garden of the Tuileries. The excitement of the hour suspended the sitting, but it was immediately resumed when the king had safely entered the palace. The king seemed perfectly calm. La Fayette, with profound respect and with his sympathies most deeply moved, presented himself at the king's apartment, and, making no allusion to the unprecedented scene which had transpired, said, "Has your majesty any orders to give me?" "It appears to me," replied the king with a smile, "that I am much more under your orders than you are under mine." The conduct of the queen in this trying hour was peculiarly unfortunate. The royal family then needed every friend it could win. But the queen, losing the control of her passions, seemed to bid defiance to all who were not the partisans of the court, and endeavored to gratify her resentment in goading those she deemed her foes by those taunts of action which are even more exasperating than words. Assuming that La Fayette was her jailer, she approached that noble patriot, who was willing to shed the last drop of his blood to save her from indignities, and handed him the keys of her trunks. La Fayette, wounded by conduct so ungenerous, and commiserating the condition of the queen, bowed, refusing to receive them, and, in tones saddened by pity and sorrow, declared that no one would think of interfering with her private property. The unhappy queen so far forgot herself as peevishly to throw the keys into La Fayette's hat, which was upon the table. This was the conduct of a spoiled child. Such was Marie Antoinette. It was this spirit which accelerated her passage to the scaffold. The compassion of La Fayette triumphed over resentment. Overlooking the insult, he calmly replied, "Madam, you must pardon me the trouble I give you in returning these keys. I certainly can not touch them." "Well, then," replied the queen, pettishly, "I shall find other persons less scrupulous than you are."[283]