“My father, displeased with the National Guard, who had but feebly supported him in presence of the populace, and with the king’s weakness, which rendered it impossible to retrieve the faults committed on that day, thought fit to resign the command of the National Guard of Paris, and to avoid all entreaties, he quitted his own house. My mother remained at home, transported with joy at the resolution he had taken, and was charged by him to receive in his stead the municipality and the sixty battalions who came to implore him to resume his command. She replied to each individual in the words which my father himself would have dictated, carefully marking by her demeanor the distinction she made between the most respectable _chefs de bataillon_, and those who, like Santerre, had necessitated by their misconduct my father’s resignation, and who that day all united in taking the same step and repeating the same protestations. My mother, perplexed as she was in performing so difficult a task, was overjoyed at the thought that my father had returned to private life. This satisfaction lasted four days. Having thus marked his displeasure at disorders which he had not been able to prevent, my father yielded to the general entreaties. He resumed his command, and my mother her trials and anxieties. “On the 21st of June of the same year, 1791, the king left Paris secretly, but was soon brought back from Varennes, where he had been arrested. In no other circumstance of my father’s life did my mother so much admire him as in the one which I am now relating. She beheld him, on the one hand, relinquishing all his republican tendencies to join in the wish of the majority; on the other hand, amidst the difficulties in which he was placed by his position, taking every responsibility, bearing all censure so as to insure the safety of the royal family, and spare them, as much as was in his power, every painful detail. My mother hastened to the Tuileries so soon as the queen began to receive, and before the constitution had been accepted. She found herself there the only woman connected with the _patriote_ party, for she believed as my father did, that politics at such a moment ought not to rule personal intercourse. [Illustration: RETURN OF THE ROYAL FAMILY TO PARIS.]