of the Royal Family. But the King and Queen refused to co-operate in this romantic and courageous plan. Their motives were not unselfish. Louis XVI. objected to Narbonne's share in the scheme; and Marie Antoinette, who regarded the double representation of the Tiers État as the cause of all her woes, detested Necker's daughter.
When the Tuileries was invaded by the mob, M. Necker, who was already at Coppet, and knew that the Baron de Staël had been recalled to Sweden, wrote urging his daughter to join him. But she was chained to Paris, fascinated by the very scenes that revolted her, and anxious to intervene, if only to save. She assisted, with slender sympathy for the revolutionaries, at the celebration of the 14th July in the Champs de Mars, and was wrung with pity for the tear-stained countenance of the Queen, whose magnificent toilette and dignified bearing contrasted with the squalor of her cortège. Madame de Staël's eyes were fixed with longing compassion on the figure of the King as he ascended the steps of the altar, there to swear for the second time to preserve the Constitution. His powdered head, so lately desecrated by the bonnet rouge, and gold-embroidered coat struck her imagination painfully as the vain symbols of vanished ease and splendour.
Then came the terrible night of the 9th August, during which, from midnight to morning, the tocsins never ceased sounding. "I was at my window with some of my friends" (wrote Madame de Staël), "and every fifteen minutes the volunteer patrol of the Constitutionels brought us news. We were told that the faubourgs were advancing headed by Santerre the brewer and Westermann.... Nobody could foresee
