On the days of the 5th and 6th of October the queen perceived (too late) the enmity of the people; her heart must have been full of vengeance. Emigration commenced, and she viewed it favourably. All her friends were at Coblentz; she was believed to be in close connection with them, and this belief was true. Stories of an Austrian committee were busily spread amongst the people. The queen was accused of conspiring for the destruction of the nation, who at every moment demanded her head. A people in revolt must have some one to hate, and they handed over to her the queen. Her name was the theme of their songs of rage. One woman was the enemy of a whole nation, and her pride disdained to undeceive them. She inclosed herself in her resentment and her terror. Imprisoned in the palace of the Tuileries, she could not put her head out of window without provoking an outrage and hearing insult. Every noise in the city made her apprehensive of an insurrection. Her days were melancholy, her nights disturbed: she underwent hourly agony for two years, and that anguish was magnified in her heart by her love for her two children, and her disquietude for the king. Her court was forsaken; she saw none but the shadows of authority; the ministers forced on her by M. de La Fayette, before whom she was compelled to mask her countenance in smiles. Her apartments were watched by spies in the guise of servants. It was necessary to mislead them, in order to have interviews with the few friends who remained to her. Private staircases, dark corridors, were the means by which at night her secret counsellors obtained access to her. These meetings resembled conspiracies; she left them every time with a different train of ideas, which she communicated to the king, whose behaviour thus acquired the incoherence of a woman persecuted and distressed. Measures of resistance, bribing the Assembly, an entire surrender of the constitution, attempts by force, an assumption of royal dignity, repentance, weakness, terror, and flight,--all were discussed, planned, decided on, prepared and abandoned, on the same day. Women, so sublime in their devotion, are seldom capable of the continuous firmness of mind--the imperturbability requisite for a political plan. Their politics are in their heart, their passions trench so closely on their reason. Of all the virtues which a throne requires they have but courage; often heroes, they are never statesmen. The queen was another example of this: she did the king incredible mischief. With a mind infinitely superior, with more soul, more character than he, her superiority only served to inspire him with mischievous counsels. She was at once the charm of his misfortunes and the genius of his destruction; she conducted him step by step to the scaffold, but she ascended it with him.