"Good night, Monsieur Lebrenn," said the King; and turning to the porter: "Send me my waiting-man Clery, to help me make my toilet. I wish to retire." Louis XVI returned to his room, while John Lebrenn, greatly surprised to recognize Desmarais's hand-writing on the envelope which Billaud-Varenne had sent him, quickly tore it open, his heart, in spite of himself, beating loud against his ribs. The missive read, Lebrenn for a moment thought he was dreaming. He hesitated to pin any faith to such unlooked-for good fortune, the realization of his dearest hopes. In vain did he seek to penetrate the motive for the singular condition placed by the lawyer upon his marriage. Examined in turn from the viewpoint of duty, of honor and of delicacy, the condition seemed to him on the whole acceptable; he simply bound himself for the future to a discretion from which he had not, in the past, varied a hair's breadth. Why attempt to paint the ineffable felicity of John Lebrenn? The night passed for him in a flood of joy. In the morning he was one of the municipal officers charged to conduct Louis XVI to the bar of the Convention. Towards nine o'clock Chambon, Mayor of Paris, accompanied by a court clerk came to deliver to the King the order to appear before the Convention. A two-horse coach awaited Louis at the door of the great tower, within the precincts of the Temple. Generals Santerre and Witenkoff were stationed on horseback beside the windows. Louis climbed into the vehicle, and seated himself on the rear seat, beside the Mayor of Paris; John Lebrenn and one of his colleagues in the Municipal Council occupied the front. As soon as the carriage issued from the courtyard of the Temple, the King realized, by the mass of military force with which his route to the National Convention was hemmed in, that the Committee of General Safety had been informed of the royalist intrigue, and had taken steps to make impossible any sudden assault calculated to carry off the prisoner. While Louis was on his way to the Convention, that sovereign assembly, already two hours in session, was calmly and with dignity transacting public affairs. The trial of the ex-Executive was, no doubt, of prime importance, but to have changed its order of business, or to interrupt it without cause before the appearance of the accused, would have given the Convention almost the appearance of intimidation before the act which it was about to consummate in the teeth of the allied Kings of Europe. The countenances of the various factions presented singular contrasts. The galleries were filled with patriots, who, in common with the Mountain and the Jacobins, saw no safety for the Republic and the Revolution save in the condemnation of Louis XVI to the penalty of death.