ceived a considerable present for the immediate time, and was informed that I should in future have a pension, which was to be continued till the period when I should return to France: an expression I have since often repeated to myself, and which, although the remembrance of it is now very painful, was, at the time it was used, replete with consolation and hope.

Shortly after, I thought I had good grounds to indulge myself in such feelings. The Count de Mercy, the Count de Metternich, and the Marquis de Circello, had received and questioned me with a solicitude equal to that of her Royal Highness. On the 14th December, 1792, I had the honor of being chosen by his Excellency, the Count de Metternich, to carry to the Emperor my master the first news, or at least the first hope, of the accession of England to the league formed against the tyrants of France, the jailors of its King.

How often on the road did I with tears in my eyes, not tears of bitterness however,

look on the dispatches of which I was the bearer! how often say to myself, I have in my hands the preservation of the King and Queen of France! Alas! scarcely did a month elapse before an account arrived at Vienna of the execrable parricide committed on the sacred person of Louis XVI. in the capital of his kingdom. I felt all the anguish that was at that moment inflicted on the heart of the unhappy Queen, for whose preservation, however, I hoped there would yet be sufficient time, although it had failed for the King's.

Hope became in my mind certainty, when I saw England compelled, by the aggression of the regicides, to declare herself, sooner perhaps than she was inclined to do; and so essential was it to me to believe that the valued object would be saved, that I cherished the fond illusion of the rebels having glutted their rage, by their first parricide, and that at least women and children, for I wished not the Queen the misery of surviving her children, would be spared by the sword of the executioner. All Germany

hoped it to the

very

last moment. At first,

no doubt was entertained but that a conquering arm was about to break the fetters of that disconsolate family, raise the throne of him whose death they were deploring, and place the young King upon it under the guardianship of his mother. It was afterwards thought, that the points, the pursuit of which by force of arms had been abandoned, would be obtained by the medium of negotiation. It was fondly imagined that means had been found to disunite the villains who ruled at Paris, to purchase the most powerful of them, and to awe the rest; and hope already saw the daughter of MARIA THERESA Conveyed to the bosom of her family, receiving those consolations which they and her whole country were emulous to offer to her. Most ardent and sincere was the desire of this hope being realized, nor can there be a doubt that those means were used which appeared the most likely to effect it: yet had the hero, who has since become the object of universal love and admiration, been then known as he now is; had the life of his aunt been committed to his heart, to his head,

to his arm, the Archduke CHARLES might at that period have preserved the Queen, and perhaps France, as he has since twice preserved Germany and Europe. Will it be said that he was then very young? true, but the Archduke CHARLES was born what others are formed. In 1793, he was twenty-two years old, precisely the age at which the great Condé gained the battle of Rocroi.

Surely, when the Prince of Saxe and General Clairfait had overthrown the French at Nerwinde; when driven from Mayence, from the country of Liege, and out of the Low Countries, the revolutionary soldiers could no longer defend even the barriers of the republic; when Dumourier and his army had shaken off the yoke of the regicide government, and were ready to turn their arms against it; when the bulk of the nation, groaning under their oppression, held out their arms to foreigners, who appeared as deliverers and not as enemies; when the Duke of York had made himself master of Valenciennes, when the Prince of Wurtemberg had entered Condé, and General Clairfait Quesnoi; when

the Commiffioners of the Convention, flying from all parts of the frontiers, unexpectedly met at Peronne to the number of thirty-two; when Barrère exclaimed in the Tribune, that there was an end to the Republic if troops were not sent to the North; when the prodigies of the Catholic and Royal Armies began to be displayed in the West, and when in the South, Toulon and Lyons were seen erecting the standard of royalty; surely during the six months occupied by these events, it was natural to think that the revolutionary monsters, as was said in a letter by the Count de Mercy, would be anticipated, that time would not be allowed them to recover themselves, and that at least they would be reduced to purchase their lives by the safety and deliverance of the august victims, who were still alive in their hands.

Instead of that, the victors stopped, divided, annihilated themselves. The august nephew of MARIA ANTOINETTA Could not prevail upon the Allies to proceed together towards the object to which his heart was solicitous to lead them. The separation of