And then the queen, hoping to touch their hearts, also appeared upon the balcony, holding in her arms the dauphin, with the tricolor on his breast.

And with this horrible escort they did go back to Paris, leaving Versailles forever, and were virtually prisoners at the Tuileries.
The position of Lafayette at this time is a singular one: an agent of the National Assembly, protecting the king from the Jacobins, and saying to Robespierre and Marat, "If you kill the king to-day, I will place the dauphin on the throne to-morrow." But the currents of a cataract nearing the fall are difficult to guide.
Three parties were forming in the National Assembly: the _Girondists_, the party of genius and eloquence and of moderation; the _Jacobins_, the party of the extremists and radicals; and a third party, undecided, waiting to see what was safest and best.
All that was noble and true and fine in the French Revolution was in the party of the Girondists.

Dreamers, idealists, their dream was of a republic like the one in America, and their ideal an impossible perfection of condition in which human reason was supreme.

The excesses of the Revolution they did not approve, but were willing to sacrifice the king and even the royal family, if necessary.

They did not realize the forces with which they were airily playing, nor that the time was at hand when the Girondists would vainly strive to restrain the horrible excesses; that, after they had sacrificed the royal family, the Jacobins would sacrifice them; the slayers would be slain! Lafayette, neither a Girondist nor a Jacobin, was a loyal Frenchman and patriot, with the American ideal in his heart, vainly trying to mediate between a feeble king and a people who had lost their reason.