After this they made excursions to Paris, where were seen these new enemies, fresh, insolent, and puffed up with a secret which was sure to escape them as soon as an opportunity should present itself.
At that moment the king might have escaped. He would have been supported, protected on his journey, and Paris perhaps, still ignorant and ill prepared, would have allowed his departure.
But the evil genius of the Autrichiefine was still watching.
Liége revolted against the emperor; and the occupation which this revolt gave to Austria prevented her from thinking of the queen of France.
The latter, on her side, thought that in delicacy she must abstain from asking any aid at such a moment.
Then events, to which impulsion had been given, continued to rush on with lightning-like rapidity.
After the ovation in honor of the Flanders regiment, the body-guards decided on giving a dinner to the officers of that regiment.
This banquet, this festival, was fixed for the 1st of October. Every important personage in the town was invited to it.
And what, then, was the object of this banquet? To fraternize with the Flanders soldiers. And why should not soldiers fraternize with one another, since the districts and the provinces fraternize?
Was it forbidden by the Constitution that gentlemen should fraternize?
The king was still the master of his regiments, and he alone commanded them; the palace of Versailles was his own property; he alone had a right to receive into it whomsoever he might please.
And why should he not receive brave soldiers and worthy gentlemen within it,—men who had just come from Douai, where they had behaved well.
Nothing could be more natural. No one thought of being astonished, and still less of being alarmed at it.
This repast, to be taken thus in union, was about to cement the affection which ought always to subsist between all the corps of a French army, destined to defend both liberty and royalty.
Besides, did the king even know what had been agreed upon?
Since the events of Paris, the king, free, thanks to his concessions, no longer occupied himself with public matters; the burden of affairs had been taken from him. He desired to reign no longer, since others reigned for him; but he did not think that he ought to weary himself by doing nothing all day long.
The king, while the gentlemen of the National Assembly were fraudulently cutting and contriving,—the king amused himself by hunting.
The king, while the nobility and the reverend bishops were abandoning, on the 4th of August, their dovecots and their feudal rights, their pigeons and their parchments,—the king, who was very willing, as all the world was doing it, to make some sacrifices, abolished all his hunting train; but he did not cease to hunt on that account.
Now, the king, while the officers of the Flanders regiment were to be dining with his body-guards, would be enjoying the pleasures of the chase, as he did every day; the tables would be cleared away before his return.
This would even inconvenience him so little, and he would so little inconvenience the banquet in question, that it was resolved to ask the queen to allow the festival to be given within the walls of the palace itself.
The queen saw no reason for refusing this hospitality to the Flanders soldiers.
She gave them the theatre for their banquet-room, in which she allowed them for that day to construct a flooring even with the stage, that there might be ample space for the guards and their guests.
When a queen wishes to be hospitable to French gentlemen, she is so to the full extent of her power. This was their dining-room, but they also required a drawing-room; the queen allowed them to use the salon of Hercules.
On a Thursday, the 1st of October, as we have already said, this feast was given, which was destined to fill so fatal a page in the history of the blindness and improvidence of royalty.
The king had gone out hunting.
The queen was shut up in her own apartments, sorrowful and pensive, and determined not to hear either the ringing of the glasses when the officers gave their toasts, or the sound of their enthusiastic cheers.