Now
they were returning, no longer the masters, but the prisoners of the
French nation! The National Assembly had passed a decree, whose
first article was: "The king is temporarily set aside from the
functions of royalty;" and whose second and third articles were,
"that so soon as the king and his family shall be brought back to
the Tuileries, a provisional watch shall be set over him, as well as
over the queen and the dauphin, which, under the command of the
general-in-chief of the National Guard of Paris, shall be
responsible for their safety and for their detention."
The king and the queen returned to Paris as prisoners, and Lafayette
was their jailer. The master of France, the many-headed King of the
French nation, was the National Assembly.
Sad, dreadful days of humiliation, of resignation, of perils and
anxieties, now followed for the royal family, the prisoners of the
Tuileries, who were watched day and night by spying eyes, and whose
doors must remain open day and night, in order that officers on
guard might look without hindrance into the apartments in which the
prisoners of the French nation lived.
During the first week after the sad return, the spirit of the queen
seemed to be broken, her energies to be impaired forever. She had no
more hope, no more fear; she threw out no new plans for escaping,
she neither worked nor wrote.
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