His enemies suggested concessions, promising him a popularity, which escaped their hands just as they were about to ensure it to him.

The court counselled the resistance which it had only in its dreams; the queen the courage she felt in her soul; intriguants, corruption, the timid, flight; and in turns, and almost at the same time, he tried all these expedients: not one was efficacious; the time for useful resolutions had passed,--the crisis was without remedy.

It was necessary to choose between life and the throne.

In endeavouring to preserve the two, it was written that he should lose both.
When we place ourselves in imagination in the position of Louis XVI., and ask what could have saved him?
we reply disheartened--nothing.

There are circumstances which enfold all a man's movements in such a snare, that, whatever direction he may take, he falls into the fatality of his faults or his virtues.