"Fortunately for him," he writes in his Memoirs, after the atrocities committed on these august victims, "fortunately for him, their arrest was not owing to his orders, but to the accident of being recognised by a post-master, and to their ill arrangements." Thus the citizen ordered that which the man trembled to see fulfilled; and tardy sensibility protested against patriotism.
Quitting the Tuileries, La Fayette went to the Hotel de Ville, on horseback.

The quays were crowded with persons whose anger vented itself in reproaches against him, which he supported with the utmost apparent serenity.

On his arrival at the Place de Greve, almost unattended, he found the duke d'Aumont, one of his officers, in the hands of the populace, who were on the point of massacring him; and he instantly mingled with the crowd, who were astonished at his audacity, and rescued the duke d'Aumont.

He thus recovered by courage the dominion, which he would have lost (and with it his life) had he hesitated.
"Why do you complain ?" he asked of the crowd.

"Does not every citizen gain twenty sous by the suppression of the civil list?
If you call the flight of the king a misfortune, by what name would you then denominate a counter-revolution that would deprive you of liberty ?" He again quitted the Hotel de Ville with an escort, and directed his steps with more confidence towards the Assembly.