They were followed on the next day by the new ministers, who
now, yielding to the demands of the National Assembly, had handed in
their resignation to the king, but did not consider it safe to
remain within range of the capital.
But another offering, and one more painful to the queen, had to be
made to the hatred of the people and the hostile demands of the
National Assembly. Marie Antoinette herself felt it, and had the
courage to express it.
Her friends the Polignacs must be sent away. In all the libellous
pamphlets which had been directed against the queen, and which
Brienne had sedulously given to her, it was one of the main charges
which had been hurled against her, that the queen had given to her
friends enormous sums from the state's treasury; that the Duchess
Julia, as governess of the royal children, and her husband the Duke
de Polignac, as director of the royal mews, received a yearly salary
of two million francs; and that the whole Polignac family together
drew nearly six million francs yearly from the national treasury.
Marie Antoinette knew that the people hated the Polignacs on this
account, and she wanted at least to put her friends in a place of
safety.
At the same hour in which the brothers of the king and the princes
of the royal family left Versailles, the Duke and the Duchess de
Polignac were summoned to the queen, and Marie Antoinette had told
them with trembling voice that they too must fly, that they must
make their escape that very night.
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