These ministers, after having examined the credentials of Mallet-Dupan, listened to his communications.

They were to the effect that "the king alike prayed and exhorted the _emigres_ not to cause the approaching war to lose its appearance of power against power, by taking part in it, in the name of the re-establishment of the monarchy.

Any other line of conduct would produce a civil war, endanger the lives of the king and queen, destroy the throne, and occasion a general massacre of the royalists.

The king added, that he besought the sovereigns who had taken up arms in his cause, to separate, in their manifesto, the faction of the Jacobins from the nation, and the liberty of the people from the anarchy that convulsed them; to declare formally and energetically to the Assembly, the administrative and municipal bodies, that their lives should be answerable for all and every attempt against the sacred persons of the king, the queen, and their children; and to announce to the nation that no dismemberment would follow the war, that they would treat for peace with the king alone, and that in consequence the Assembly should hasten to give him the most perfect liberty, in order to enable him to negotiate in the name of his people with the allied powers." Mallet-Dupan explained the sense of these instructions with that enlightened good sense, and that devoted attachment to the king that marked him; he painted in the most lively colours the interior of the Tuileries, and the terror to which the royal family was a prey.
The negotiators were moved almost to tears, and promised to communicate these impressions to their sovereigns, and gave Mallet-Dupan the assurance that the intentions of the king should be the measure of the language which the manifesto of the coalition would address to the French nation.
They did not however dissimulate their astonishment at the fact that the language of the emigrant princes at Coblentz was so opposed to the views of the king at Paris.

"They openly manifest," said they, "the intention of re-conquering the kingdom for the counter-revolution, of rendering themselves independent, of dethroning their brother and proclaiming a regency." The confidant of Louis XVI.