3. Necker, De La Révolution, II, 71–74, 84.

The king was hunting [October 5th]. He was informed immediately of the news which had been received, and on his return to Versailles he had to decide what course to follow in a difficult situation, His personal sentiment did not incline him to take to flight, and if in the early days there had been an intention to conceal this fact, the officers in service about the king should have been forbidden to say and to repeat that they had heard him, walking with long strides in his room, repeat several times, with a sentiment of repugnance and indignation: "A fugitive king! A fugitive king!"

He decided, however, to order his carriages, but the traces having been cut or detached by the people of Versailles, who wished, it was said, at any risk to prevent the departure of the court, there were new doubts and a second deliberation. The excitement was general within the château, and the queen, within a period of a few hours, held two absolutely different opinions. The monarch, surrounded, environed by his guards, would have conquered, I believe, the resistance of the people, but the excellent goodness of the prince made him hesitate to be the occasion and the witness of a tumult where the shedding of blood would have been, perhaps, inevitable. Yet at the moment and in a situation where the person even of the king might be exposed, it is evident that he alone ought to decide the matter, and he resolved to remain at Versailles. The political question was the only one that his ministers and other persons with whom he took council were called upon to treat, and this question was then second in order. I heard only the opinions given in the king’s study, so I did not know the opinion of the princes, but in a great number of persons, just one, so far as I can remember, voted for the king to go without any modification. . . . The morning of October 6th the king did not hesitate to promise to go to establish himself in Paris. He set out surrounded by the national guards and followed, preceded by an immense throng of people. His soul was sorrowful at the thought of the fate of many of his faithful guards, who had just perished by the assassin’s hand; and his eyes could distinguish in the midst of the crowd monsters in human form, who bore as a trophy the frightful signs of their sanguinary ferocity. What a journey! What an inauguration of the future!