"The queen said to me," writes Madame Campan, "that La Fayette was offered to them as a resource, but that it would be better for them to perish than to owe their safety to a man who had done them the most mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity of treating with him."--_Mémoires of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan_, vol. ii., p. 223.] [Footnote 333: Thiers, vol. i., p. 278.] [Footnote 334: "The king had committed himself, on the subject of the Constitution, to the allied powers, in the instructions he had given to Mallet du Pan, and was no longer at liberty, even if he had been disposed, on account of any such object as the Constitution, to have united himself with La Fayette, not even though La Fayette was endeavoring to accomplish the great point, of all others to be most desired, the overthrow of the Girondists and the Jacobins. On the whole, the court must be considered as now preferring the chance of the invasion of the allied powers, and the king the chance of some mediation between them and the people of France, that is, the chance of better terms than the Constitution offered. This must, I think, be supposed the line of policy that was now adopted. It was one full of danger, and, on the whole, a mistake; but with the expectation that was then so generally entertained of the certain success of the allied powers, a mistake not unnatural."--_Prof. Smyth's Lectures_, vol. ii., p. 295.] [Footnote 335: Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. ii., p. 45.] [Footnote 336: "A court apparently in concert with the enemy resorted to no means for augmenting the armies and exciting the nation, but, on the contrary, employed the _veto_ to thwart the measures of the legislative body, and the _civil list_ (the king's salary) to secure partisans in the interior."--_Thiers_, vol. i., p. 280.] [Footnote 337: Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 230.] [Footnote 338: "It becomes evident that a republic was desired only from despair of the monarchy, that it never was a fixed fact, and that, on the very eve of attaining it, those who were accused of having long paved the way to it, would not sacrifice the public weal for its sake, but would have consented to a constitutional monarchy, if it were accompanied with sufficient safeguards."--_Thiers_, vol. i., p. 308.] [Footnote 339: M. Brissot was a lawyer of considerable literary distinction, who, when but twenty years of age, had been imprisoned in the Bastille for some of his political writings. He was a passionate admirer of the Americans, and despairing, in consequence of the fickleness or treachery of the king, of a constitutional monarchy, endeavored to secure for France a republic. About a year from the time of the above speech he perished with the rest of the Girondists upon the scaffold.--_Biographe Moderne._] CHAPTER XXVII. THE THRONE DEMOLISHED.