And this is the man whom the
King hesitates to banish! Perhaps, after all, boy, I did wrong to
counsel Lafayette and d'Azay to stand by a King who is weakness itself
and who knows not how to defend himself or his throne!"
CHAPTER X
AT VERSAILLES
It was just a week after Mr. Calvert's visit to the hotel d'Azay and the
affair of the rue St. Antoine, that the day arrived for the consummation
of that great event toward which all France, nay, all Europe, had been
looking for months past.
With a sudden burst and glory of sunshine and warm air the long, hard
winter had given way to the spring of that year of 1789. By the end of
April the green grass and flowering shrubs looked as if summer had come,
and the cruel cold of but a few weeks back was all but forgotten. And
with the quickening pulse of nature the agitation and restless activity
among all classes had increased. The whole kingdom of France was astir
with the excitement of the rapidly approaching convocation of the
States-General. Paris read daily in the columns of the _Moniteur_ the
names of the newly elected deputies, and by the 1st of May those
deputies were thronging her streets.
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