He was the butt against which all parties directed the hate or rage of the people.

He had the privilege of every accusation; whilst from the tribune Mirabeau, Barnave, Petion, Lameth, and Robespierre, eloquently threatened the throne; infamous pamphlets, factious journals painted the king in the colours of a tyrant who was brutalised by wine, who lent himself to every caprice of an abandoned woman, and who conspired in the recesses of his palace with the enemies of the nation.

In the sinister feeling of his coming fall, the stoical virtue of this prince sufficed for the calming of his conscience, but was not adequate to his resolutions.

On leaving the council of his ministers, where he loyally accomplished the constitutional conditions of his character, he sought, sometimes in the friendship of his devoted servants, sometimes from the very persons of his enemies, admitted by stealth to his confidence, the most important inspirations.

Counsels succeeded to counsels, and contradicted one another in the royal ear, as their results contradicted each other in their operations.