He felt himself vanquished, and desired, it would almost seem, to die by anticipation.
The queen, throwing herself at his feet, and presenting to him his children, forced him to break this mournful silence.

"Let us," she exclaimed, "preserve all our fortitude, in order to sustain this long struggle with fortune.

If our destruction be inevitable, there is still left to us the choice of how we will perish; let us perish as sovereigns, and do not let us wait without resistance, and without vengeance, until they come and strangle us on the very floor of our own apartments!" The queen had the heart of a hero; Louis XVI.

had the soul of a sage; but the genius which combines wisdom with valour was wanting to both: the one knew how to struggle--the other knew how to submit--neither knew how to reign.
XXVIII.
The effect of this flight, had it succeeded, would have wholly changed the aspect of the Revolution.

Instead of having in the king, captive in Paris, an instrument and a victim, the Revolution would have had in an emancipated king, an enemy or a mediator; instead of being an anarchy, she would have had a civil war; instead of having massacres, she would have gained victories; she would have triumphed by arms, and not by executions.
Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on a chance! And yet this was not a chance.