When they arrived at the door at the foot of the staircase which led to the hall of the Assembly, they found an immense crowd of men and women there blocking up the entrance. "They shall not enter here," was the cry; "they shall no longer deceive the nation. They are the cause of all our misfortunes. Down with the veto! Down with the Austrian woman! Abdication or death!" "Sire," said one, in compassionate tones to the king, "Don't be afraid. The people are just. Be a good citizen, sire, and send the priests and your wife away from the palace." The soldiers endeavored to force their way through the crowd, and, in the struggle, the members of the royal family were separated from each other. A stout grenadier seized the dauphin and raised him upon his shoulders. The queen, terrified lest her child was to be taken from her, uttered a piercing shriek. But the grenadiers pressed forward through the crowd, and, entering the hall with the king and queen, placed the prince royal on the table of the Assembly. The illustrious Girondist M. Vergniaud was in the chair. The king approached him and said, "I have come hither to prevent a great crime. I thought I could not be safer than with you." "You may rely, sire," Vergniaud replied, "on the firmness of the Assembly. Its members have sworn to die in supporting the rights of the people and the constituted authority." The king took his seat. There were but few members present. A mournful silence pervaded the hall as the deputies, with saddened countenances and sympathetic hearts, gazed upon the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the beautiful young princess, and the dauphin, whom the queen held by the hand. All angry feelings died in presence of the melancholy spectacle, for all felt that a storm was now beating against the throne which no human power could allay. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 340: La Fayette's Memoirs. "M. de La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his former embassy; for on the 10th of July M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in which he drew a plan, ready as he said, for execution, to open the way for the king through his enemies, and to establish him in safety either in Compiègne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his constitutional guards and his faithful army,"--_Bertrand de Moleville._] [Footnote 341: "That there should be no more sympathy," says Professor Smyth, "expressed by the king or the Royalists ever after, with the elevated nature of the principles of La Fayette or the steadiness of his loyalty, whenever he saw, as he thought, the king in danger, is quite intolerable; and there are no occasions on which the royal party appear to so little advantage as when it is desirable that they should show some little candor, some common justice to La Fayette."--_Lectures on French Revolution_, vol. ii., p. 298.] [Footnote 342: History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 36.]