full of lights, how the hot darkness was filled with the sound of bells and of the royal troops marching in to occupy their post of garrison in the Tuileries. We have seen the assault on the palace and how the populace conquered. The monarchy was swept away, the royal family imprisoned, and all the power of parliament passed at the same moment into the hands of its extreme and most democratic party. Such was the day known in history as the Tenth of August. The army of Brunswick was within a day’s ride of the frontier. Lafayette, whose command stood barring Brunswick’s way, was instantly called upon by his own conscience to determine whether he should save the soil of his country or his constitutional king. It was a gendarme flying from Paris, and later an officer also flying from the capital, that brought him the news of the Tenth of August; he so received it, probably late upon Sunday, the twelfth of August. He guessed that a provisional, and therefore, to him, a usurping, government had been set up in the place of the old constitutional ministry. News came through slowly, but Lafayette learned certainly by Monday that it was so. The old dismissed ministry had been “unconstitutionally” recalled by the parliament, acting, of course, under the pressure of the populace of Paris, and to these had been added most “unconstitutionally” certain ultra-revolutionary names, notably Danton’s. This new government and its creature, the purged and diminished parliament, was sending out commissioners, post-haste, who should bear its orders to the armies upon the frontiers, and obtain their allegiance to the new and quasi-republican system which Paris and the Jacobins had established by hard fighting upon the Friday before. Upon Tuesday, August 14th, the three commissioners, members of the parliament bearing such orders, arrived at Lafayette’s headquarters in Sedan; but Lafayette had already made up his mind. When the three members of the parliament presented their message to the municipality of Sedan, the mayor and corporation of that town, in agreement with Lafayette and perhaps under his orders, arrested them, and imprisoned them in the citadel of the place; Lafayette himself provided a guard. On Tuesday the whole army was mustered in [Illustration: GEORGES JACQUES DANTON _To face p. 149_ ] the meadows which lie beyond the river before the town, the scene of the worst sufferings after the defeat of 1870, and an oath to obey the old Constitution was administered to them. Three corps refused the oath; one company of grenadiers, one of the new volunteer battalions,--that raised by the Department of the Allier,--and most notably the gunners. They swore to obey “the representatives of the nation and no other.” Certain, though not all, of these were put under arrest by Lafayette, and his act of rebellion against the new government was completed. Here is the critical moment: here is the hour in which he might have directed all the future.