History of the Girondists, Volume I / Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution

by Alphonse de Lamartine

BOOK III.

I.

There is for a people, as for individuals, an instinct of conservation which warns and "gives them pause," even under the impulses of the most blind passions, before the dangers into which they are about to fling themselves headlong. They seem suddenly to recede at the aspect of this abyss, into which but now they were hastening precipitately. The intermissions of human passions are short and fugitive, but they give time to events, returns to wisdom, and opportunities to statesmen. These are moments in which they seize the hesitating and intimidated spirit of the people, in order to make them create a reaction against their own excesses, and to lead them back by the very revulsion of the passions that have already urged them too far. The day after the 25th of June, 1791, France experienced one of those throes of repentance which save a people. There was only the statesman wanting.

Never had the National Assembly presented a spectacle so imposing and so calm as during the five days which had succeeded the king's departure. It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity. It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it. It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion—called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne—regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:—in the irresponsible chief of the state. These three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public reason was her sole constitution. There was no longer a king, for he was a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law, for the constitution was incomplete: there was no longer a minister, for the executive power was suspended; and yet the kingdom was standing erect, was acting, organising, defending itself, preserving itself—and what is still more marvellous, controlled itself. It held in reserve in a palace the principal machinery of the constitution,—Royalty; and the day when the work is accomplished, it puts the king in his place, and says to him, "Be free and reign."

II.

One thing only dishonours this majestic interregnum of the nation—the temporary captivity of the king and his family. But we must remember that the nation had the right to say to its chief; "If thou wilt reign over us, thou shalt not quit the kingdom, thou shalt not convey the royalty of France amongst our enemies." And as to the forms of that captivity in the Tuileries, we must remember too that the National Assembly had not prescribed them,—that in fact it

had risen with indignation at the word imprisonment,—that it had commanded a political resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution—a hostage against the republic and royalty at the same time. Maire du palais, he intimidated by the presence of a weak and degraded monarch, the discouraged royalists and the restrained republicans. Louis XVI. was his pledge.

Barnave and the Lameths had within the Assembly the attitude of La Fayette without. They required the king, in order to defend themselves from their enemies. So long as there was a man (Mirabeau) between the throne and themselves, they had played with the republic and sapped the throne in order to crush a rival. But Mirabeau dead and the throne shaken, they felt themselves weak against the very impulse they had given. They sustained, therefore, this wreck of monarchy in order to be sustained in their turn. Founders of the Jacobins, they trembled before their own handiwork:—they took refuge in the constitution which they themselves had dilapidated, and passed from the character of destructives to that of statesmen. But for the first part there is only violence needed; for the second genius is required. Barnave had talent only. He had something more, however—he had a heart, and he was a good man. The first excesses of his language were in him but the excitements of the tribune; he was desirous of tasting the popular applause, and it was showered upon him beyond his real merit. Hereafter it was not with Mirabeau he was about to measure his strength; it was with the Revolution in all its force. Jealousy took from him the pedestal which it had lent, and he was about to appear as he really was.

III.

But a sentiment more noble than that of his personal safety impelled Barnave to side with the monarchical party. His heart had passed before his ambition to the side of weakness, beauty, and misfortune. Nothing is more dangerous than for a sensitive man to know those against whom he contends. Hatred against the cause shrinks before the feeling for the persons. We become partial unwittingly. Sensibility disarms the understanding, and we soften instead of reasoning, whilst the sensitiveness of a commiserating man soon usurps the place of his opinion.

It was thus that Barnave's mind was worked upon, after the return from Varennes. The interest he had conceived for the queen had converted this young republican into a royalist. Barnave had only previously known this princess through a cloud of prejudice, amid which parties enshroud those whom they wish to have detested. A sudden communication caused this conventional atmosphere to dissipate, and he adored, when close, what he had calumniated at a distance. The very character which fortune had cast for him in the destiny of this woman had something unexpected and romantic, capable of dazzling his lofty imagination, and deeply affecting his generous disposition. Young, obscure, unknown but a few months before, and now celebrated, popular, and powerful—thrown in the name of a sovereign assembly between the people and the king—he became the protector of those whose enemy he had been. Royal and suppliant hands met his plebeian touch! He who opposed the popular royalty of talent and eloquence to the royalty of the blood of the Bourbons! He covered with his body the life of those who had been his masters. His very devotion was a triumph; the object of that devotion was in his queen. That queen was young, handsome, majestic; but brought to the level of ordinary humanity by her alarm for her husband and his children. Her tearful eyes besought their safety from Barnave's eyes. He was the leading orator in that Assembly which held the fate of the monarch in his house. He was the favourite of that people whom he controlled by a gesture, and whose fury he averted during the long journey between the throne and death. The queen had placed her son, the young dauphin, between his knees. Barnave's fingers had played with the fair hair of the child. The king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, had distinguished, with tact, Barnave from the inflexible and brutal Pétion. They had conversed with him as to their situation: they complained of having been deceived as to the nature of the public mind in France. They unveiled their repentance and constitutional inclinations. These conversations, marred in the carriage by the presence of the other commissioner and the eyes of the people, had been stealthily and more intimately renewed in the meetings which the royal family nightly held. Mysterious political correspondences and secret interviews in the Tuileries were contrived. Barnave, the inflexible partisan, reached Paris a devoted man. The nocturnal conference of Mirabeau with the queen, in the park of Saint Cloud, was ambitioned by his rival; but Mirabeau sold, Barnave gave, himself. Heaps of gold bought the man of genius; a glance seduced the man of sentiment.

IV.

Barnave had found Duport and the Lameths, his friends, in the most monarchical moods, but from other motives than his own. This triumvirate was in terms of good understanding at the Tuileries. Lameths and Duport saw the king. Barnave, who at first dared not venture to visit the chateau, subsequently went there secretly. The utmost precaution and concealment attended these interviews. The king and queen sometimes awaited the youthful orator in a small apartment on the entre sol of the palace, with a key in their hand, so as to open the door the moment his footsteps were heard. When these meetings were utterly impossible, Barnave wrote to the queen. He reckoned greatly on the strength of his party in the Assembly, because he measured the power of their opinions by the talent with which they expressed them. The queen did not feel a similar confidence. "Take courage, madame," wrote Barnave; "it is true our banner is torn, but the word Constitution is still legible thereon. This word will recover all its pristine force and prestige, if the king will rally to it sincerely. The friends of this constitution, retrieving past errors, may still raise and maintain it firmly. The Jacobins alarm public reason; the emigrants threaten our nationality. Do not fear the Jacobins—put no trust in the emigrants. Throw yourself into the national party which now exists. Did not Henry IV. ascend the throne of a Catholic nation at the head of a Protestant party?"

The queen with all sincerity adopted this tardy counsel, and arranged with Barnave all her measures, and all her foreign correspondence. She neither said nor did any thing which could thwart the plans he had conceived for the restoration of royal authority. "A feeling of legitimate pride," said the queen when speaking of him, "a feeling which I am far from blaming in a young man of talent born in the obscure ranks of the third estate, has made him desire a revolution which should smooth the way to fame and influence. But his heart is loyal, and if ever power is again in our hands, Barnave's pardon is already written on our hearts." Madame Elizabeth partook of this regard of the king and queen for Barnave. Defeated at all points, they had ended by believing that the only persons capable of restoring the monarchy were those who had destroyed it. This was a fatal superstition. They were induced to adore that power of the Revolution which they could not bend.

V.

The first acts of the king were too much imbued with the inspirations of Barnave and the Lameths for the royal dignity. He addressed to the commissioners of the Assembly charged with interrogating him as to the circumstances of the 21st of June, a reply, the bad faith of which called for the smile rather than the indulgence of his enemies.

"Introduced into the king's chamber and alone with him," said the commissioners of the Assembly, "the king made to us the following declaration:—The motives of my departure were the insults and outrages I underwent on the 18th of April, when I wished to go to St. Cloud. These insults remained unpunished, and I thereupon believed that there was neither safety nor decorum in my staying any longer in Paris. Unable to quit publicly, I resolved to depart in the night, and without attendants; my intention was never to leave the kingdom. I had no concert with foreign powers, nor with the princes of my family who have emigrated. My residence would have been at Montmédy, a place I had chosen because it is fortified, and that being close to the frontier, I was more ready to oppose every kind of invasion. I have learnt during my journey that public opinion was decided in favour of the constitution, and so soon as I learnt the general wish I have not hesitated, as I never have hesitated, to make the sacrifice of what concerns myself for the public good."

"The king," added the queen, in her declaration, "desiring to depart with his children, I declare that nothing in nature could prevent my following him. I have sufficiently proved, during two years, and under the most painful circumstances, that I will never separate from him."

Not content with this inquiry into the motives and circumstances of the king's flight, public opinion, much irritated, demanded that the hand of the nation should be extended even to the paternal authority, and that the Assembly should appoint a governor for the dauphin. Eighty names, for the most part of obscure persons, were found in the division which was openly taken. They were hailed with shouts of general derision. This outrage to the king and father was spared him. The governor subsequently named by Louis XVI., M. de Fleurieu, never entered upon his duties. The governor of the heir to an empire was the gaoler of a prison of malefactors.

The Marquis de Bouillé addressed from Luxembourg a threatening letter to the Assembly, in order to turn from the king all popular indignation, and to assume to himself the projection and execution of the king's departure. "If," he added, "one hair of the head of Louis XVI. fall to the ground, not one stone of Paris shall remain upon another. I know the roads, and will guide the foreign armies thither." A laugh followed these words. The Assembly was sufficiently wise not to require the advice of M. de Bouillé, and strong enough to despise the threats of a proscribed man.

M. de Cazalès sent in his resignation, in order to go and fight (aller combattre). The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom were Maury, Montlozier, the abbé Montesquieu, the abbé de Pradt, Virieu, &c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and destroyed, the king, under pretext of a sacred respect for royalty. They remained in the Assembly, but they annulled their power, and would only be considered as a living protest against the violation of the royal liberty and authority. The Assembly refused to hear the reading of their protest, which was itself a violation of their elective power; and they then published it and circulated it profusely all over the kingdom. "The decrees of the Assembly," they said, "have wholly absorbed the royal power. The seal of state is on the president's table; the king's sanction is annihilated. The king's name is erased from the oath which is taken from the law. The commissioners convey the orders of the committees direct to the armies. The king is a captive; a provisional republic occupies the interregnum. Far be it from us to concur in such acts; we would not even consent to be witnesses of it, if we had not still the duty of watching over the preservation of the king. Excepting this sole interest, we shall impose on ourselves the most absolute silence. This silence will be the only expression of our constant opposition to all your acts."

These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that protests abdicates. On this day there was emigration in the Assembly. This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt of politicians. Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins, Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative Assembly, it sanctioned the convention. The royalists took away the weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress carried off the head of the king and their own heads. A great opinion never lays down its arms with impunity for its country.

VI.

The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it. On seeing so large a body of the supporters of the constitutional monarchy withdraw from the contest voluntarily, they at once foresaw what they might dare, and they dared it. Their sittings became more significant in proportion as those of the Assembly grew more dull and impotent. The words of "forfeiture" and "republic" were heard there for the first time. Retracted at first, they were afterwards again pronounced: uttered at first like blasphemies, they were not long in being familiar as principles. Parties did not at first know what they themselves desired—they learnt it from success. The daring broached distempered ideas; if repulsed, the sagacious disavowed them—if caught up, the leaders resumed them. In conflicts of opinions reconnaissances are employed, as they are in the campaigns of armies. The Jacobins were the advanced guard of the Revolution, who measured the opposing obstacles of the monarchical feeling.

The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was openly demanded.

"We are free and without a king," said the Cordeliers, "as the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,—let us profit by the occasion and our right—let us swear that France is a republic."

This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited universal indignation. On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded the positive forfeiture of the throne (la déchéance), and the nomination of a council of regency. "Your king," he said, "is an idiot, or a criminal. It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world, if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did not prefer the latter alternative."

On the 27th, Girey Dupré, a young writer who awaited the Gironde, mooted the judgment of Louis XVI. "We can punish a perjured king, and we ought;" such was the text of his discourse. Brissot opened the question as Pétion had done at the preceding sitting, "Can a perjured king be brought to trial (jugé)?

"Why," asked Brissot "should we divide ourselves into dangerous denominations? we are all of one opinion. What do they want who are here hostile to the republicans? They detest the turbulent assemblies of Athens and Rome; they fear the division of France into isolated federations. They only want the representative constitution, and they are right. What do they want who boast of the name of republicans? They fear, they abhor equally, the turbulent assemblies of Rome and Athens, and equally dread a federated republic. They desire a representative constitution—nothing more, nothing less—and thus, we all concur. The head of the executive power has betrayed his oath,—must we bring him to judgment? This is the only point on which we differ. Inviolability will else be impunity to all crimes, an encouragement for all treason—common sense demands that the punishment should follow the offence. I do not see an inviolable man governing the people, but a God and 25,000,000 of brutes! If the king had on his return entered France at the head of foreign forces, if he had ravaged our fairest provinces, and if, checked in his career, you had made him prisoner, what would you then have done with him? Would you have allowed his inviolability to have saved him? Foreign powers are held up before you as a threat; do not fear them: Europe in arms is impotent against a people who will be free."

In the National Assembly Muguer, in the name of the joint committees, brought up the report on the king's flight; he maintained the inviolability of Louis XVI. and the accusation of his accomplices. Robespierre opposed the inviolability; he avoided all show of anger in his language; and was careful to veil all his conclusions beneath the cover of mildness and humanity. "I will not pause to inquire," he said, "whether the king fled voluntarily, of his own act, or if from the extremity of the frontiers a citizen carried him off by his advice: I will not inquire either, whether this flight is a conspiracy against the public liberty. I shall speak of the king as of an imaginary sovereign, and of inviolability as a principle." After having combated the principle of inviolability by the same arguments which Girey Dupré and Brissot had applied, Robespierre thus concluded. "The measures you propose cannot but dishonour you; if you adopt them, I demand to declare myself the advocate of all the accused. I will be the defender of the three gardes du corps, the dauphine's governess, even of Monsieur de Bouillé. By the principles of your committees, there is no crime; yet, invariably, where there is no crime there can be no accomplices. Gentlemen, if it be a weakness to spare a culprit, to visit the weaker culprit when the greater one escapes, is cowardice—injustice. You must pass sentence on all the guilty alike, or pronounce a general pardon."

Grégoire supported the accusation party. Salles defended the recommendation of the committee.

Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said: "The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected. I will not dilate on the advantages of monarchical government: you have proved your conviction by establishing it in your country: I will only say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. Some men, whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce, have found, in America, a people occupying a vast territory with a scanty population, nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbours, having forests for their boundaries, and having for customs the feelings of a new race, and who are wholly ignorant of those factitious passions and impulses which effect revolutions of government. They have seen a republican government established in that land, and have thence drawn the conclusion that a similar government was suitable for us. These men are the same who at this moment are contesting the inviolability of the king. But, if it be true that in our territory there is a vast population spread,—if it be true that there are amongst them a multitude of men exclusively given up to those intellectual speculations which excite ambition and the love of fame,—if it be true that around us powerful neighbours compel us to form but one compact body in order to resist them,—if it be true that all these circumstances are irresistible, and are wholly independent of ourselves, it is undeniable that the sole existing remedy lies in a monarchical government. When a country is populous and extensive, there are—and political experience proves it—but two modes of assuring to it a solid and permanent existence. Either you must organise those parts separately;—you must place in each section of the empire a portion of the government, and thus you will maintain security at the expense of unity, strength, and all the advantages which result from a great and homogeneous association:—or else you will be forced to centralise an unchangeable power, which, never renewed by the law, presenting incessantly obstacles to ambition, resists with advantage the shocks, rivalries, and rapid vibrations of an immense population, agitated by all the passions engendered by long established society. These facts decide our position. We can only be strong through a federative government, which no one here has the madness to propose, or by a monarchical government, such as you have established; that is to say, by confiding the reins of the executive power to a family having the right of hereditary succession. You have intrusted to an inviolable king the exclusive function of naming the agents of his power, but you have made those agents responsible. To be independent the king must be inviolable: do not let us set aside this axiom. We have never failed to observe this as regards individuals, let us regard it as respects the monarch. Our principles, the constitution, the law, declare that he has not forfeited (qu'il n'est pas déchu): thus, then, we have to choose between our attachment to the constitution and our resentment against an individual. Yes, I demand at this moment from him amongst you all, who may have conceived against the head of the executive power prejudices however strong, and resentment however deep; I ask at his hands whether he is more irritated against the king than he is attached to the laws of his country? I would say to those who rage so furiously against an individual who has done wrong,—I would say, Then you would be at his feet if you were content with him? (Loud and lengthened applause.) Those who would thus sacrifice the constitution to their anger against one man, seem to me too much inclined to sacrifice liberty from their enthusiasm for some other man; and since they love a republic, it is, indeed, the moment to say to them, What, would you wish a republic in such a nation? How is it you do not fear that the same variableness of the people, which to-day manifests itself by hatred, may on another day be displayed by enthusiasm in favour of some great man? Enthusiasm even more dangerous than hatred: for the French nation, you know, understands better how to love than to hate. I neither fear the attacks of foreign nations nor of emigrants: I have already said so; but I now repeat it with the more truth, as I fear the continuation of uneasiness and agitation, which will not cease to exist and affect us until the Revolution be wholly and pacifically concluded. We need fear no mischief from without; but vast injury is done to us from within, when we are disturbed by painful ideas—when chimerical dangers, excited around us, create with the people some consistency and some credit for the men who use them as a means of unceasing agitation. Immense damage is done to us when that revolutionary impetus, which has destroyed every thing there was to destroy, and which has urged us to the point where we must at last pause, is perpetuated. If the Revolution advance one step further it cannot do so without danger. In the line of liberty, the first act which can follow is the annihilation of royalty; in the line of equality, the first act which must follow is an attempt on all property. Revolutions are not effected with metaphysical maxims—there must be an actual tangible prey to offer to the multitude that is led astray. It is time, therefore, to end the Revolution. It ought to stop at the moment when the nation is free, and when all Frenchmen are equal. If it continue in trouble, it is dishonoured, and we with it; yes, all the world ought to agree that the common interest is involved in the close of the Revolution. Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible to make it retrograde. Those who fashioned it must see that it is at its consummation. Kings themselves—if from, time to time profound truths can penetrate to the councils of kings—if occasionally the prejudices which surround them will permit the sound views of a great and philosophical policy to reach them—kings themselves must learn that there is for them a wide difference between the example of a great reform in the government and that of the abolition of royalty: that if we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! but be their conduct what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us. Regenerators of the empire! follow straightly your undeviating line; you have been courageous and potent—be to-day wise and moderate. In this will consist the glorious termination of your efforts. Then, again returning to your domestic hearths, you will obtain from all, if not blessings, at least the silence of calumny." This address, the most eloquent ever delivered by Barnave, carried the report in the affirmative; and for several days checked all attempts at republic and forfeiture in the clubs of the Cordeliers and Jacobins. The king's inviolability was consecrated in fact as well as in principle. M. de Bouillé, his accomplices and adherents, were sent for trial to the high national court of Orleans.

VII.

Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually progressing. Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man, orator, or statesman to contain. Its breath was too powerful for any one breast to respire it solely. Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound. Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it. It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims.

Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance. These two levers were the press and the clubs. The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air. Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted itself in the circle of the established government, the air of journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement. The stagnation within was fully credited, but the current was without.

The press, in the half century which had preceded the Revolution, had been the echo, well organised and calm, of the thoughts of sages and reformers. From the time when the Revolution burst forth, it had become the turbulent and frequently cynical echo of the popular excitement.

It had itself transformed the modes of communicating ideas; it no longer produced books—it had not the time: at first it expended itself in pamphlets, and subsequently in a multitude of flying and diurnal sheets, which, published at a low price amongst the people, or gratuitously placarded in the public thoroughfares, incited the multitude to read and discuss them. The treasury of the national thought, whose pieces of gold were too pure, or too bulky, for the use of the populace, it was, if we may be allowed the expression, converted into a multitude of smaller coins, struck with the impress of the passions of the hour, and often tarnished with the foulest oxides. Journalism, like an irresistible element of the life of a people in revolution, had made its own place, without listening to the law which had been made to restrain it.

Mirabeau, who required that his speeches should echo throughout the departments, had given birth to this speaking trumpet of the Revolution, (despite the orders in council) in his Letters to my Constituents, and in the Courrier de Provence. At the opening of the States General, and at the taking of the Bastille, other journals had appeared. At each new insurrection there was a fresh inundation of newspapers. The leading organs of public agitation were then the Revolution of Paris, edited by Loustalot; a weekly paper, with a circulation of 200,000 copies; the feeling of the man may be seen in the motto of his paper: "The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees—let us rise!" The Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, subsequently called the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, was the production of Camille Desmoulins. This young student, who became suddenly a political character on a chair in the garden of the Palais Royal, on the first outbreak of the month of July, 1789, preserved in his style, which was frequently very brilliant, something of his early character. It was the sarcastic genius of Voltaire descended from the saloon to the pavement. No man in himself ever personified the people better than did Camille Desmoulins. He was the mob with his turbulent and unexpected movements, his variableness, his unconnectedness, his rages interrupted by laughter, or suddenly sinking into sympathy and sorrow for the very victims he immolated. A man, at the same time so ardent and so trifling, so trivial and so inspired, so indecisive between blood and tears, so ready to crush what he had just deified with enthusiasm, must have the more empire over a people in revolt, in proportion as he resembled them. His character was his nature. He not only aped the people, he was the people himself. His newspapers cried in the public streets, and their sarcasm, bandied from mouth to mouth, has not been swept away with the other impurities of the day. He remains, and will remain, a Menippus, the satirist stained with blood. It was the popular chorus which led the people to their most important movements, and which was frequently stifled by the whistling of the cord of the street lamp, or in the hatchet-stroke of the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins was the remorseless offspring of the Revolution,—Marat was its fury; he had the clumsy tumblings of the brute in his thought, and its gnashing of teeth in his style. His journal (L'Ami du Peuple), the People's Friend, smelt of blood in every line.

VIII.

Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a savant without reputation, with a desire for fame without having received from society or nature the means of acquiring either, he revenged himself on all that was great not only in society but in nature. Genius was as hateful to him as aristocracy. Wherever he saw any thing elevated or striking he hunted it down as though it were a deadly enemy. He would have levelled creation. Equality was his mania, because superiority was his martyrdom; he loved the Revolution because it brought down all to his level; he loved it even to blood, because blood washed out the stain of his long-during obscurity; he made himself a public denouncer by the popular title; he knew that denouncement is flattery to all who tremble, and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism, inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity, and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence, and there he took refuge safe from poignard and poison. His journal affected the imagination like something supernatural. Marat was wrapped in real fanaticism. The confidence reposed in him nearly amounted to worship. The fumes of the blood he incessantly demanded had mounted to his brain. He was the delirium of the Revolution, himself a living delirium!

IX.

Brissot, as yet obscure, wrote Le Patriote Français. A politician, and aspiring to leading parts, he only excited revolutionary passions in proportion as he hoped one day to govern by them. At first a constitutionalist and friend of Necker and Mirabeau, a hireling before he became a doctrinaire, he saw in the people only a sovereign more suitable to his own ambition. The republic was his rising sun; he approached it as to his own fortune, but with prudence, and frequently looking behind him to see if opinion followed his traces.

Condorcet, an aristocrat by genius, although an aristocrat by birth, became a democrat from philosophy. His passion was the transformation of human reason. He wrote La Chronique de Paris.

Carra, an obscure demagogue, had created for himself a name of fear in the Annales Patriotiques. Fréron, in the Orateur du Peuple, rivalled Marat. Fauchet, in the Bouche de Fer, elevated democracy to a level with religious philosophy. The "last not least," Laclos, an officer of artillery, author of an obscene novel, and the confidant of the Duc d'Orleans, edited the Journal des Jacobins, and stirred up through France the flame of ideas and words of which the focus was in the clubs.

All these men used their utmost efforts to impel the people beyond the limits which Barnave had prescribed to the event of the 21st June. They desired to avail themselves of the instant when the throne was left empty to obliterate it from the constitution. They overwhelmed the king with insults and objurgations, in order that the Assembly might not dare to replace at the head of their institutions a prince whom they had vilified. They clamoured for interrogatory, sentence, forfeiture, abdication, imprisonment, and hoped to degrade royalty for ever by degrading the king. The republic saw its hour for the first moment, and trembled to allow it to escape. All these hands at once urged men's minds towards a decisive movement. Articles in the journals provoked motions, motions petitions, and petitions riots. The altar of the country in the Champ-de-Mars, which remained erected for a new federation, was the place which was already pointed out for the assemblies of the people. It was the Mons Aventinus, whither it was to retire, and whence it was to dictate to a timid and corrupt senate.

"No more king,—let us be republicans," wrote Brissot in the Patriote. "Such is the cry at the Palais Royal, and it does not gain ground fast enough; it would seem as though it were blasphemy. This repugnance for assuming the name of the condition in which the state actually is is very extraordinary in the eyes of philosophy." "No king! no protector! no regent! Let us have done with man-eaters of every sort and kind," re-echoed the Bouche de Fer. "Let the eighty-three departments enter into a federation, and declare that they will no longer endure tyrants, monarchs, or protectors. Their shade is as fatal to the people as that of the Bohonupas is deadly to all that lives. If we nominate a regent we shall soon fight for the choice of a master. Let us only contend for liberty."

Provoked by this reference to the regency, which appeared to point to him, the Duc d'Orleans wrote to the journals that he was ready to serve his country by land or by sea; but in respect to any question of regency, he from that moment renounced, and for ever, any pretensions to that title which the constitution might give him. "After having made so many sacrifices to the cause of the people," he said, "I am no longer in a condition to quit my position as a simple citizen. Ambition in me would be an inexcusable inconsistency."

Already discredited by all parties, this prince, henceforth incapable of serving the throne, was equally incapable of serving the republic. Odious to the royalists, put aside by the demagogues, suspected by the constitutionalists, there only remained to him the stoical attitude in which he took refuge. He had abdicated his rank, abdicated his own faction; he had abdicated the favour of the people. His life was all that remained to him.

At the same moment Camille Desmoulins was thus satirically apostrophising La Fayette, the first idol of the Revolution:—"Liberator of two worlds, flower of Janissaries, phœnix of Alguazils-major, Don Quixotte of Capet and the two chambers, constellation of the white horse[2], my voice is too weak to raise itself above the clamour of your thirty thousand spies, and as many more your satellites, above the noise of your four hundred drums, and your cannons loaded with grape. I had until now misrepresented your—more than—royal highness through the allusions of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport. It was after them that I denounced you to the eighty-three departments as an ambitious man who only cared for parade, a slave of the court similar to those marshals of the league to whom revolt had given the bâton, and who, looking upon themselves as bastards, were desirous of becoming legitimate; but all of a sudden you embrace each other, and proclaim yourselves mutually fathers of your country! You say to the nation, 'Confide in us; we are the Cincinnati, the Washingtons, the Aristides.' Which of these two testimonies are we to believe? Foolish people! The Parisians are like those Athenians to whom Demosthenes said, 'Shall you always resemble those athletes who struck in one place cover it with their hand,—struck in another place they place their hand there, and thus always occupied with the blows they receive, do not know either how to strike or defend themselves!' They are beginning to doubt whether Louis XVI. could be perjured since he is at Varennes. I think I see the same great eyes open when they shall see La Fayette open the gates of the capital to despotism and aristocracy. May I be deceived in my conjectures, for I am going from Paris, as Camillus my patron departed from an ungrateful country, wishing it every kind of prosperity. I have no occasion to have been an emperor like Diocletian to know that the fine lettuces of Salernum, which are far superior to the empire of the East, are quite equal to the gay scarf which a municipal authority wears, and the uneasiness with which a Jacobin journalist returns to his home in the evening, fearing always lest he should fall into an ambuscade of the cut-throats of the general. For me it was not to establish two chambers that I first mounted the tricolour cockade!"

X.

Such was the general tone of the press, such the exhaustless laughter which this young man diffused, like the Aristophanes of an irritated people. He accustomed it to revile men, majesty, misfortune, and worth. The day came when he required for himself and for the young and lovely woman whom he adored, that pity which he had destroyed in the people. He found, in his turn, only the brutal derision of the multitude, and he himself then became sad and sorry for the first and last time.

The people, all whose political idea is from the senses, could not at all comprehend why the statesmen of the Assembly should impose upon them a fugitive king, out of respect for abstract royalty. The moderation of Barnave and Lameth seemed to them full of suspicion; and cries of treason were uttered at all their meetings. The decree of the Assembly was the signal for increased ferment, which developed from and after the 13th of July, in zealous meetings, imprecations, and threats. Large bodies of workmen, leaving their work, congregated in the public places, and demanded bread of the municipal authorities. The commune, in order to appease them, voted for distributions and supplies. Bailly, the mayor of Paris, harangued them, and gave them extraordinary work. They went to it for a moment, and then quitted it, being speedily attracted by the mob becoming dense and uttering cries of hunger.

The crowd betook itself from the Hôtel-de-Ville to the Jacobins, from the Jacobins to the National Assembly, clamorous for the forfeiture of the crown and the republic. This popular gathering had no other leader than the uneasiness that excited it. A spontaneous and unanimous instinct assured it that the Assembly would be found wanting at the hour of great resolutions. This mob desired to compel it again to seize the opportunity. Its will was the more potent as it was wholly impossible to trace it to its source—no chief gave it any visible impetus. It advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the streets—on the corner stone—its threatening petitions.

The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed "The People." The 14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name. The Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day.

On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms. "Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected? Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny? If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them."

On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal. Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until justice should be done to them. That evening 4000 persons went to the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the real assembly of the people. The chiefs in whom they reposed confidence were there: the tribune was occupied by a member who was denouncing to the meeting a citizen for having made a remark injurious to Robespierre; the accused was justifying himself, and they drove him tumultuously from the chamber. At this moment Robespierre appeared, and begged them to pardon the citizen who had insulted him. His generous intercession was hailed with applause, and enthusiasm for Robespierre was at its height. "Sacred vaults of the Jacobins," were the words of an address from the departments; "you guarantee to us Robespierre and Danton, these two oracles of patriotism." Laclos proposed a petition to be sent into the departments, and covered with ten millions of signatures. A member opposes this proposition, from love of order and peace. Danton rises,—"And I, too, love peace, but not the peace of slavery. If we have energy, let us show it. Let those who do not feel courage to rise and beard tyranny refrain from signing our petition: we want no better proof by which to understand each other. Here it is to our hand."

Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition. A man of calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly movement would split against the organised resistance of the bourgeoisie. He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly. Laclos pressed his motion, and the people carried it. At midnight they separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition.

The day following was lost to sedition, by disputes between the clubs as to the terms of the petition. The Republicans negotiated with La Fayette, to whom they offered the presidency of an American government. Robespierre and Danton, who detested La Fayette—Laclos, who urged on the Duc d'Orleans, concerted together, and impeded the impulse given by the Cordeliers subservient to Danton. The Assembly watchful, Bailly on his guard, La Fayette resolute, watched in unison for the repression of all outbreak. On the 16th the Assembly summoned to its bar the municipality and its officers, to make it responsible for the public peace. It drew up an address to the French people, in order to rally them around the constitution. Bailly, the same evening, issued a proclamation against the agitators. The fluctuating Jacobins themselves declared their submission to the decrees of the Assembly. At the moment when the struggle was expected, the leaders of the projected movement were invisible. The night was spent in military preparations against the meeting on the morrow.

XI.

On the 17th, very early in the morning, the people, without leaders, began to collect in the Champ-de-Mars, and surround the altar of the country, raised in the centre of the large square of the confederation. A strange and melancholy chance opened the scenes of murder on this day. When the multitude is excited, every thing becomes the occasion of crime. A young painter, who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar, were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of their wickedness. The mob mustered, and raging with fury, surrounded the guard-house of the Gros-Caillou. The two invalids underwent an interrogatory. The moment when they left the guard-house, to be conveyed to the Hôtel-de-Ville, the populace rushed upon them, tore them from the soldiers who were escorting them, rent them in pieces, and their heads, placed on the tops of pikes, were carried by a band of ferocious children to the environs of the Palais Royal.

XII.

The news of these murders, confusedly spread and variously interpreted in the city, in the Assembly, among various groups, excited various feelings, according as it was viewed as a crime of the people or a crime of its enemies. The truth was only made apparent long after. The agitation increased from the indignation of some and the suspicions of others. Bailly, duly informed, sent three commissaries and a battalion. Other commissaries traversed the quarters of the capital, reading to the people the proclamation of the magistrates and the address of the National Assembly.

The ground of the Bastille was occupied by the national guard and the patriotic societies, which were to go thence to the field of the Federation. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Brissot, and the principal ringleaders of the people had disappeared; some said in order to concert insurrectional measures, at Legendre's house in the country; others, in order to escape the responsibility of the day. The former version was the more generally accredited, from Robespierre's known hatred to Danton, to whom Saint Just said, in his accusation—"Mirabeau, who meditated a change of dynasty, appreciated the force of thy audacity, and laid hands upon it. Thou didst startle him from the laws of stern principle; we heard nothing more of thee until the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars. Thou didst support that false measure of the people, and the proposition of the law, which had no other object than to serve for a pretext for unfolding the red banner, and an attempt at tyranny. The patriots, not initiated in this treachery, had opposed thy perfidious advice. Thou wast named in conjunction with Brissot to draw up this petition. You both escaped the prey of La Fayette, who caused the slaughter of ten thousand patriots. Brissot remained calmly in Paris, and thou didst hasten to Arcis-sur-Aube, to pass some agreeable days. Can one fancy thy tranquil joys—thou being one of the drawers up of this petition, whilst those who signed the document were loaded with irons, or weltering in their blood? You were then—thou and Brissot—objects for the gratitude of tyranny; because, assuredly, you could not be the objects of its detestation!"

Camille Desmoulins thus justifies the absence of Danton, himself, and Fréron, by asserting that Danton had fled from proscription and assassination to the house of his father-in-law, at Fontenay, on the previous night, and was tracked thither by a band of La Fayette's spies; and that Fréron, whilst crossing the Pont Neuf, had been assailed, trampled under foot, and wounded by fourteen hired ruffians; whilst Camille himself, marked for the dagger, only escaped by a mistake in his description. History has not put any faith in these pretended assassinations of La Fayette.

Camille, invisible all day, repaired in the evening to the Jacobins.

XIII.

In the mean while the crowd began to congregate in vast masses in the Champ-de-Mars—agitated, but inoffensive—the national guard, every battalion of whom La Fayette had ordered out, were under arms. One of the detachments which had arrived that morning in the Champ-de-Mars, with a train of artillery, withdrew by the quays, in order that the appearance of an armed force might not irritate the people. At twelve o'clock the crowd assembled round the "altar of the country" (autel de la patrie), not seeing the commissioners of the Jacobin club, who had promised to bring the petition to be signed, of their own accord chose four commissioners of their number to draw up one. One of the commissioners took the pen, the citizens crowded round him, and he wrote as follows:—

"On the altar of the country, July 13th, in the year III. Representatives of the people, your labours are drawing to a close. A great crime has been committed; Louis flies, and has unworthily abandoned his post—the empire is on the verge of ruin—he has been arrested, and has been brought back to Paris, where the people demand that he be tried. You declare he shall be king. This is not the wish of the people, and the decree is therefore annulled. He has been carried off by the two hundred and ninety-two aristocrates, who have themselves declared that they have no longer a voice in the National Assembly. It is annulled because it is in opposition to the voice of the people, your sovereign. Repeal your decree: the king has abdicated by his crime: receive his abdication; convoke a fresh constitutive power; point out the criminal, and organise a new executive power."

This petition was laid on the altar of the country, and quires of paper, placed at the four corners of the altar, received six thousand autographs.

This petition is still preserved in the archives of the Municipality, and bears on it the indelible imprint of the hand of the people. It is the medal of the Revolution struck on the spot in the fused metal of popular agitation. Here and there on it are to be traced those sinister names that for the first time emerged from obscurity. These names are like the hieroglyphics of the ancient monuments. The acts of men now famous, who signed names then unknown and obscure, give to these signatures a retrospective signification, and the eye dwells with curiosity on these characters that seem to contain in a few marks the mystery of a long life—the whole horror of an epoch. Here is the name of Chaumette, then a medical student, Rue Mazarine, No. 9. There Maillard, the president of the fearful massacres of September. Further on, Hébert; underneath it, Hanriot, Inspector Warden of the condemned prisoners (Général des Suppliciés) during the reign of terror. The small and scrawled signature of Hébert, who was afterwards the "Père Duchesne," or le Peuple en colère, is like a spider that extends its arms to seize its prey. Santerre has signed lower down: this is the last name of note, the rest are alone those of the populace. It is easy to discern how many a hasty and tremulous hand has traced the witness of its fury or ignorance on this document. Many were even unable to write. A circle of ink with a cross in the centre marks their anonymous adhesion to the petition. Some female names are to be seen, and numerous names of children are discernible, from the inaccuracy of their hand, guided by another: poor babes, who professed the opinions of their parents, without comprehending them; and who signed the attestation of the passions of the people, ere their infant tongues could utter a manly sound.

XIV.

The municipal body had been informed at two o'clock of the murders committed at the Champ-de-Mars, and of the insults offered to the body of national guards sent to disperse the mob. M. de La Fayette himself, who headed this detachment, had been struck by several stones hurled at him by the populace. It was even reported that a man in the uniform of the national guard had fired a pistol at him, and that he had generously pardoned and released this man, who had been seized by the escort. This popular report cast a halo of heroism around M. de La Fayette, and animated anew the national guard, who were devoted to him. At this recital Bailly did not hesitate to proclaim martial law, and to unfurl the red flag, the last resource against sedition. On their side, the mob, alarmed at the aspect of the red flag floating from the windows of the Hôtel-de-Ville, despatched twelve of their number as a deputation to the municipality. These commissioners with difficulty made their way to the audience-hall, through a forest of bayonets, and demanded that three citizens who had been arrested should be given up to them. No attention was paid to them, however, and the resolution of employing force was adopted. The mayor and authorities descended the steps of the Hôtel-de-Ville, uttering threats of their intentions. At the sight of Bailly preceded by the red flag a cry of enthusiasm burst from the ranks, and the national guards clashed the butts of their muskets loudly against the stones. The public force, indignant with the clubs, was in a state of that nervous excitement that occasionally takes possession of large bodies as well as individuals.

La Fayette, Bailly, and the municipal authorities commenced their march preceded by the red flag, and followed by 10,000 national guards, the paid battalions of grenadiers of this army of citizens formed the advanced guard. An immense concourse of people followed by a natural impulse this mass of bayonets that slowly descended the quays and the rue du Gros-Caillou, towards the Champ-de-Mars. During this march, the people congregated around the altar of the country since the morning continued to sign the petition in peace. They were aware that the troops were called out, but did not believe any violence was intended; their calm and lawful method of proceeding, and the impunity of their sedition for two years, made them believe in a perpetual impunity, and they looked on the red flag merely as a fresh law to be despised.

On his arrival at the glacis of the Champ-de-Mars, La Fayette divided his forces into three columns; the first debouched by the avenue of the Ecole Militaire, the second and third by the two successive openings that intersect the glacis between the Ecole Militaire and the Seine. Bailly, La Fayette, and the municipal body with the red flag, marched at the head of the first column. The pas de charge beaten by 400 drums, and the rolling of the cannon over the stones, announced the arrival of the national army. These sounds drowned for an instant the hollow murmurs and the shrill cries of 50,000 men, women, and children, who filled the centre of the Champ-de-Mars, or crowded on the glacis. At the moment when Bailly debouched between the glacis, the populace, who from the top of the bank looked down on the mayor, the bayonets, and the artillery, burst into threatening shouts and furious outcries against the national guard. "Down with the red flag! Shame to Bailly! Death to La Fayette!" The people in the Champ-de-Mars responded to these cries with unanimous imprecations. Lumps of wet mud, the only arms at hand, were cast at the national guard, and struck La Fayette's horse, the red flag, and Bailly himself; and it is even said that several pistol shots were fired from a distance; this however was by no means proved,—the people had no intention of resisting, they wished only to intimidate. Bailly summoned them to disperse legally, to which they replied by shouts of derision; and he then, with the grave dignity of his office, and the mute sorrow that formed part of his character, ordered them to be dispersed by force. La Fayette first ordered the guard to fire in the air; but the people, encouraged by this vain demonstration, formed into line before the national guard, who then fired a discharge that killed and wounded 600 persons, the republicans say 10,000. At the same moment the ranks opened, the cavalry charged, and the artillerymen prepared to open their fire; which, on this dense mass of people, would have taken fearful effect. La Fayette, unable to restrain his soldiers by his voice, placed himself before the cannon's mouth, and by this heroic act saved the lives of thousands. In an instant the Champ-de-Mars was cleared, and nought remained on it save the dead bodies of women, children, trampled under foot, or flying before the cavalry; and a few intrepid men on the steps of the altar of their country, who, amidst a murderous fire and at the cannon's mouth, collected, in order to preserve them, the sheets of the petition, as proofs of the wishes, or bloody pledges of the future vengeance, of the people, and they only retired when they had obtained them.

The columns of the national guard, and particularly the cavalry, pursued the fugitives into the neighbouring fields, and made two hundred prisoners. Not a man was killed on the side of the national guard; the loss of the people is unknown. The one side diminished it, in order to extenuate the odium of an execution without resistance; the others augmented it, in order to rouse the people's resentment. At night, which was already fast approaching, the bodies were cast into the Seine. Opinions were divided as to the nature and details of this execution, some terming it a crime, and others a painful duty; but this day of unresisting butchery still retains the name given it by the people, The Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars.

XV.

The national guard, headed by La Fayette, marched victorious, but mournful, again into Paris: it was visible by their demeanour that they hesitated between self-congratulation and shame, as though undecided on the justice of what they had done. Amidst a few approving acclamations that saluted them on their passage, they heard smothered imprecations; and the words murderers and vengeance were substituted for patriotism and obedience to the law. They passed with a gloomy air beneath the windows of that Assembly they had so lately protected; still more sadly and more silently beneath the windows of the palace of that monarchy, whose cause rather than whose king, they had just defended. Bailly, calm and glacial as the law—La Fayette, resolute and stern as a system, knew not how to awake any feeling beyond that of imperious duty. They furled the red flag, stained with the first drops of blood; and dispersed, battalion after battalion, in the dark streets of Paris, more like gendarmes after an execution, than an army returning from a victory.

Such was this "Day of the Champ-de-Mars," which gave a reign of three months to the Assembly, by which they did not profit; which intimidated the clubs for a few days, but which did not restore to the monarchy or to the public tranquillity the blood it had cost. La Fayette had on this day the destiny of the monarchy and the republic in his hands: he merely re-established order.

XVI.

The next morning Bailly appeared before the Assembly to report to them the triumph of the law. He displayed the heartfelt sorrow of his mind, and the masculine energy that formed part of his duty.

"The conspiracy had been formed," said he; "it was necessary to employ force, and severe punishment has overtaken the crime." The president approved, in the name of the Assembly, of the mayor's conduct, and Barnave thanked the national guard in cold and weak language, whilst his praises seemed near akin to excuses. The enthusiasm of the victors had already subsided, and Pétion perceiving this, rose and said a few words concerning a projet de décret that had just been proposed, against those who should assemble the people in numbers. These words, in the mouth of Pétion, who was well known to be the friend of Brissot and the conspirators, were at first received with sarcastic cries by the côté droit, and then with loud applause from the côté gauche and the tribunes. The victory of the Champ-de-Mars was already contested in the Assembly, and the clubs re-opened that evening. Robespierre, Brissot, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Marat, who had for some days past disappeared, now took fresh courage, for the hesitation of their enemies reassured them,—by constantly attacking a power that was contented to remain on the defensive, they could not fail to weary it out, and thus, from accused they transformed themselves into accusers. Their papers abandoned for a short time, became more malignant from their temporary panic, and heaped ridicule and odium on Bailly and La Fayette. They aroused the people to vengeance by displaying unceasingly before their eyes the blood of the Champ-de-Mars. The red flag became the emblem of the government and the winding-sheet of liberty. The conspirators figured as victims, and constantly kept popular excitement on the rack, by imaginary stories of the most odious persecutions.

XVII.

"See," wrote Desmoulins, "see how the furious satellites of La Fayette rush from their barracks, or rather from their taverns,—see, they assemble and load their arms with ball, in the presence of the people, whilst the battalions of aristocrates mutually excite each other to the massacre. It is chiefly in the eyes of the cavalry that you behold the love of blood aroused by the double influence of wine and vengeance. It was against women and babes that this army of butchers chiefly directed their fury. The altar of the country is strewn with dead bodies,—it is thus that La Fayette has dyed his hands in the gore of citizens: those hands which, in my eyes, will ever appear to reek with this innocent blood—this very spot where he had raised them to heaven to swear to defend them. From this moment, the most worthy citizens are proscribed; they are arrested in their beds, their papers are seized, their presses broken, and lists of the names of those proscribed are signed; the modérés sign these lists, and then display them. 'Society must be purged,' is their cry, 'of such men as Brissot, Carra, Pétion, Bonneville, Fréron, Danton, and Camille.' Danton and I found safety in flight alone from our assassins. The patriots are timid factions." "And," added Fréron, "there are men to be found, who venture to justify these cowardly murders—these informations—these lettres de cachet—these seizures of papers—these confiscations of presses. The red flag floats for a week from the balcony of the Hôtel-de-Ville, like as in times of old, the banners torn from the grasp of the dying foeman floated from the arched roof of our temples." In another part he says, "Marat's presses have been seized—the name of the author should have sufficed to protect the typographer. The press is sacred, as sacred as the cradle of the first-born, which even the officers of the law have orders to respect. The silence of the tomb reigns in the city, the public places are deserted, and the theatres re-echo alone with servile applause of royalism, that triumphs alike on the stage and in our streets. You were impatient, Bailly, and you treacherous, La Fayette, to employ that terrible weapon, martial law, so dangerous, so difficult to be wielded. No, no, nought can ever efface the indelible stain of the blood of your brethren, that has spurted over your scarfs and your uniforms. It has sunk even to your heart—it is a slow poison that will consume ye all."

Whilst the revolutionary press thus infused the spirit of resentment into the people, the clubs, reassured by the indolence of the Assembly, and by the scrupulous legality of La Fayette, suffered but slightly the effects of this body blow of the victory of the Champ-de-Mars. A schism took place in the assembly of the Jacobins between the intolerant members and its first founders, Barnave, Duport, and the two Lameths. This schism took its rise in the great question of the non-re-eligibility of the members of the National Assembly for the Legislative Assembly which was so soon to succeed. The pure Jacobins, together with Robespierre, wished that the National Assembly should abdicate, en masse, and voluntarily sentence themselves to a political ostracism, in order to make room for men of newer ideas and more imbued with the spirit of the time. The moderate and constitutional Jacobins looked upon this abdication as equally fatal to the monarch, as it dealt a mortal blow to their ambition, for they wished to seize on the direction of the power they had just created; they deemed themselves alone competent to control the movement that they had excited, and they sought to rule in the name of those laws of which they were the framers. Robespierre, on the contrary, who felt his own weakness in an assembly composed of the same elements, wished these elements to be excluded from the new assembly: he himself suffered by the law that he laid down for his colleagues; but with scarcely a rival to dispute his authority at the Jacobins, they formed his assembly. His instinct or calculation told him that the Jacobins must have supreme sway in a newly formed assembly composed of men whose very names were unknown to the nation. One of the faction himself, it was enough for him that the factions reigned; and the tool he possessed in the Jacobins, and his immense popularity, gave him the positive assurance that he should rule the factions.

This question, at the time of the events of the Champ-de-Mars, agitated, and already tended to dissolve the Jacobins. The rival club of the Feuillants, composed almost entirely of constitutionalists and members of the National Assembly, had a more legal and monarchical appearance. The irritation caused by the popular excesses, and their hatred for Robespierre and Brissot, induced the ancient founders of the club to join the Feuillants. The Jacobins trembled lest the empire of the factions should escape them, and that division would weaken them. "It is the court," said Camille Desmoulins, the friend of Robespierre, "it is the court that foments this schism amongst us, and has invented this perfidious stratagem to destroy the popular party. It knows the two Lameths, La Fayette, Barnave, Duport, and the others who first figured in the Jacobin assembly. 'What,' the court asked itself, 'is the aim of all these men? their aim was to be elevated to rank and station, by the voice of the people, and by the gales of popularity, of command of the ministers, of gold: what they needed was court favour to serve as the sails of their ambition; and, wanting these sails, they use the oars of the people. Let us prove to Lameth and Barnave that they will not be re-elected, that they cannot fill any important place before four years have passed away. They will be indignant, and return to our party. I saw Alexandre and Theodore Lameth the evening of the day on which Robespierre's motion of the non-re-eligibility was carried. The Lameths were then patriots, but the next day they were no longer the same. 'It is impossible to submit to this,' said they,—'in concert with Duport—we must quit France.' What! shall those who have been the architects of the constitution undergo the mortification of witnessing the downfall of the edifice they have reared, by this approaching system of legislation? We shall be condemned to hear from the galleries of the Assembly, some fool in the tribune attack our wisest enactments, which we are denied the power of defending. Would to Heaven! that they would quit France. Is it not enough to cause us to despise both the Assembly and the people of Paris, when we see that the clue of this is, that the supreme control was on the point of eluding the grasp of Lameth and La Fayette, and that Duport and Barnave would not be again elected."

Pétion, alarmed at these symptoms of discord, addressed the tribune of the Jacobins in conciliatory terms—"You are lost" said he, "should the members of the Assembly quit your party, and betake themselves en masse to the Feuillants. The empire of public opinion is deserting you; and these countless affiliated societies, imbued with your spirit, will sever the bonds of fraternity, and unite them to you. Forestall the designs of your enemies. Publish an address to the affiliated societies, and reassure them of your constitutional intentions; tell them that you have been belied to them, and that you are no promoters of faction. Tell them that far from wishing to disturb public tranquillity, your sole design is to avert those troubles entailed on you by the king's departure. Tell them that we submit to the rapid and imposing influence of opinion, and that respect for the Assembly, fidelity to the constitution, devotion to the cause of your country and of liberty, form your principles." This address, dictated by the hypocrisy of fear, was adopted and sent to all the societies in the kingdom. This measure was followed by a remodelling of the Jacobins; the primitive nucleus alone was suffered to remain, which re-organised the rest by the ballot over which Pétion presided.

On their side the Feuillants wrote to the patriotic societies of the provinces, and for a brief space there was an interregnum of the factions; but the societies of the provinces speedily declared en masse, and with an almost unanimous and revolutionary enthusiasm, in favour of the Jacobins.

"Free and sincere union with our brothers in Paris:" such was the rallying cry of the clubs. Six hundred clubs sent in their adherence to the Jacobins; eighteen alone declared for the Feuillants. The factions felt the importance of unity as fully as the nation, and the schism of opinion was stifled by the enthusiasm for the grandeur of their work, Pétion, in a letter to his constituents which made a great sensation, spoke of these fruitless attempts at dissension amongst the patriots, and denounced those who dissented from it. "I tremble for my country," said he; "the modérés are meditating the reform of the constitution already; and to place again in the king's hands the power the people have scarcely acquired. My mind is overwhelmed by these gloomy reflections, and I despond. I am ready to quit the post you have confided to me. Oh, my country, be but thou saved, and I shall breathe my last sigh in peace!"

Such were Pétion's words, and from that hour he became the idol of the people. He possessed neither the abilities nor the audacity of Robespierre; but he had hypocrisy, that shameless veil of doubtful positions. The people believed him to be sincere, and his speeches had the same influence over them as his reputation.

XVIII.

The coalition which he denounced to the people was true. Barnave had an understanding with the court. Malouet, an eloquent and able member of the right, had an understanding with Barnave: a plan for modifying the constitution had been concerted between these two men—yesterday foes, to-day allies. The moment was come for uniting in one general measure all these scattered laws valid during a revolution of thirty months. In separating, on this review of the acts of the Assembly, what was integral from that which was not, the occasion must arise for a revision of every act of the constitution. It was, therefore, the moment to profit (in order to amend them in a sense more monarchical), by the reaction produced by La Fayette's victory. What impulse and anger had too violently taken from the prerogatives of the crown, reason and reflection could restore to it. The same men who had placed the executive power in the hands of the Assembly, hoped to be able to withdraw it from them. They believed they could effect every thing by their eloquence and popularity. Like all who are descending the tide of a revolution, they thought they were able to ascend the stream with equal ease. They did not see that their strength, of which they were so proud, was not in themselves, but in the current which bore them along. Events were about to teach them that there is no opposing passions to which concession has been once made. The strength of a statesman is his power. One concession, how slight soever, to factions, is an irrevocable engagement with them: when once we consent to become their instrument, we may be made their idol and their victim, never their master. Barnave was doomed to learn this when too late; and the Girondists were to learn it after him. The plan was thus arranged:—Malouet was to ascend the tribune, and in a vehement but well-reasoned discourse was to attack all the errors of the constitution; he was to demonstrate that if these vices were not amended by the Assembly before the constitution itself should be presented to the king and the people to swear to, it would be anarchy registered by an oath. The three hundred members of the côté droit were to support the charges of their spokesman by vehement plaudits. Barnave was then to demand a reply, and in a discourse, apparently much excited, was to have vindicated the constitution from the invectives of Malouet, at the same time conceding that as this constitution was suddenly produced by the enthusiastic ardour of the Revolution, and under the impulse of desperately contending circumstances, there might be some imperfections in a certain portion of the construction; that the grave consideration and wisdom of the Assembly might remedy these errors before it dissolved; and that, amongst other ameliorations which might be applied to this work, they might retouch two or three articles in which the power assigned to the executive authority and the legislative authority had been ill defined, so as to restore to the executive power the independence and scope indispensable to their existence. The friends of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport, as well as all the members of the left, would have clamorously supported the speaker, except Robespierre, Pétion, Buzot, and the republicans. A commission would have been instantly named for the special revision of the articles alluded to. This commission would have made its report before the end of the meeting of the chambers; and the three hundred votes of Malouet, united to the constitutional votes of Barnave, would have assured to the monarchical amendments the majority which was to restore royalty.

XIX.

But the members of the right refused to give their unanimous concurrence to this plan. "To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt. To unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves. To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king even to gratitude towards a member of a faction. Their hopes had not fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a character in a comedy of startled revolutionists. Their hopes were not in any amelioration of present ill, but in its progress towards worse. The very excess of disorder would punish disorder itself. The king was at the Tuileries, but royalty was not there—it was at Coblentz, it was on all the thrones of Europe. Monarchies were all in connection; they knew very well how to restore the French monarchy without the fellowship of those who had overturned it."

Thus reasoned the members of the right. Feelings and resentments closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand of its friends than that of its enemies. The plan was abortive.

Whilst the captive king kept up a twofold understanding with his emigrant brothers to learn the strength and inclination of foreign powers, and with Barnave to attempt the conquest of the Assembly, the Assembly itself lost its power; and the spirit of the Revolution, quitting the place in which it had no longer any hopes, went to excite the clubs and municipalities, and bestow its energies on the elections. The Assembly had committed the fault of declaring its members not re-eligible for the new legislature. This act of renunciation of itself, which resembled the heroism of disinterestedness, was in reality the sacrifice of the country; it was the ostracism of superior power, and an assurance of triumph to mediocrity. A nation how rich soever in genius and virtue, never possesses more than a definite number of great citizens. Nature is chary of superiority. The social conditions necessary to form a public man are rarely in combination. Intelligence, clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance. The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues. The republican party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists. The constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which they expected their successors would present. It was a vote of contending passions, all evil, and which could only produce a loss to all parties. The king alone was averse from this measure. He perceived repentance in the National Assembly—he was in communication with its leading members—he had the key to many consciences. A new nation, unknown and impatient, was about to present it before him in a new Assembly. The reports of the press, the clubs, and places of popular bruit told him, but too plainly, on what men the excited people would bestow their confidence. He preferred known, exhausted, opponents, men partly gained over, to new and ardent enemies who would surpass in exactions those they replaced. To them there only remained his throne to overthrow,—to him there was left to yield but his life.

XX.

The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton;—in the departments, those of Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet,—who were afterwards Girondists; and those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who, subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or his victims. Condorcet was a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid. Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth: his science was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph necessarily over all the resistance of matter; must lay bare all the creative powers of nature, and renew the face of creation. He had made of this system a line of politics, whose first idea was to adore the future and abhor the past. He had the cool fanaticism of logic, and the reflective anger of conviction. A pupil of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Helvetius, he, like Bailly, was of that intermediate generation by which philosophy was embodied with the Revolution. More ambitious than Bailly, he had not his impassibility. Aristocrat by birth, he, like Mirabeau, had passed over to the camp of the people. Hated by the court, he hated it as do all renegades. He had become one of the people, in order to convert the people into the army of philosophy. He wanted of the republic no more than was sufficient to overturn its prejudices. Ideas once become victorious,—he would willingly have confided it to the control of a constitutional monarchy. He was rather a man for dispute than a man of anarchy. Aristocrats always carry with them, into the popular party, the desire of order and command. They would fain

"Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."

Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and feel themselves impotent to command. Condorcet had edited the Chronique de Paris from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte Chapelle, elected Condorcet to the chamber. The same club returned Danton.

XXI.

Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the Châtelet, had increased with it in influence. He had already that celebrity which the multitude easily assigns to him whom it sees every where, and always listens to. He was one of those men who seem born of the stir of revolutions, and which float on its surface until it swallows them up. All in him was like the mass—athletic, rude, coarse. He pleased them because he resembled them. His eloquence was like the loud clamour of the mob. His brief and decisive phrases had the martial curtness of command. His irresistible gestures gave impulse to his plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the rapid movement which bears him away with it. He was intoxicated with the revolutionary vertigo as a man becomes drunken with wine; yet he bore his intoxication well. He had that superiority of calmness in the confusion he created, which enabled him to control it: preserving sangfroid in his excitement and his temper, even in a moment of passion, he jested with the clubs in their stormiest moods. A burst of laughter interrupted bitterest imprecations; and he amused the people even whilst he impelled them to the uttermost pitch of fury. Satisfied with his two-fold ascendency, he did not care to respect it himself, and neither spoke to it of principles nor of virtue, but solely of force. Himself, he adored force, and force only. His sole genius was contempt for honesty; and he esteemed himself above all the world, because he had trampled under foot all scruples. Every thing was to him a means. He was a statesman of materialism, playing the popular game, with no end but the terrible game itself, with no stake but his life, and with no responsibility beyond nonentity. Such a man must be profoundly indifferent either to despotism or to liberty. His contempt of the people must incline him rather to the side of tyranny. When we can detect nothing divine in men, the better part to play is to make use of them. We can only serve well that which we respect. He was only with the people because he was of the people, and thus the people ought to triumph. He would have betrayed it, as he served it, unscrupulously. The court well knew the tariff of his conscience. He threatened it in order to make it desirous of buying him; he only opened his mouth in order to have it stuffed with gold. His most revolutionary movements were but the marked prices at which he was purchaseable. His hand was in every intrigue, and his honesty was not checked by any offer of corruption. He was bought daily, and next morning was again for sale. Mirabeau, La Fayette, Montmorin, M. de Laporte, the intendant of the civil list, the Duc d'Orleans, the king himself, all knew his price. Money had flowed with him from all sources, even the most impure, without remaining with him. Any other individual would have felt shame before men and parties who had the secret of his dishonour; but he only was not ashamed, and looked them in the face without a blush. His was the quietude of vice.[3] He was the focus of all those men who seek in events nothing but fortune and impunity. But others had only the baseness of crime—Danton's vices partook of the heroic—his intellect was all but genius. He had upon him the bright flash of circumstances, but it was as sinister as his face. Immorality, which was the infirmity of his mind, was in his eyes the essence of his ambition; he cultivated it in himself as the element of future greatness. He pitied any body who respected any thing. Such a man had of necessity a vast ascendency over the bad passions of the multitude. He kept them in continual agitation, and always boiling on the surface ready to flow into any torrent, even if it were of blood.

XXII.

Brissot de Warville was another of these popular candidates for the representation. As this individual was the root of the Girondist party, the first apostle and first martyr of the republic, we ought to know him. Brissot was the son of a pastrycook at Chartres, and had received his education in that city with Pétion, his fellow countryman. An adventurer in literature, he had begun by assuming the name of Warville, which concealed his own. It is a plebeian nobility not to blush at one's father's name. Brissot had not done so. He began by furtively appropriating one of the titles of that aristocracy of races against which he was about to raise equality. Like Rousseau in every thing but his genius, he sought his fortune hither and thither, and descended even lower than he into misery and intrigue, before he acquired celebrity. Dispositions become weakened and stained by such a struggle with the difficulties of life in the dregs of great corrupted cities. Rousseau had paraded his indigence and his reveries in the bosom of nature; and as its consideration calms and purifies everything he quitted it a philosopher. Brissot had dragged his misery and vanity into the heart of Paris and of London, and into those haunts of infamy in which adventurers and pamphleteers drag on a filthy existence: he left them an intriguer. Yet in the very midst of these vices which had rendered his honesty dubious, and name bespotted, he nurtured in the depths of his soul three virtues capable of again elevating him—an unshaken love for a young girl, whom he married in spite of his family, a love of occupation, and a courage against the difficulties of life, which he had afterwards to display in the face of death. His philosophy was identical with Rousseau's. He believed in God. He had faith in liberty, truth, and virtue. He had in his soul that unqualified devotion towards the human species which is the charity of philosophers. He detested society, for in it there was no place awarded to him; but what he hated with unmitigated hate was the state of society; its prejudices—its falsehoods. He would have recast it, less for himself than for the benefit of mankind. He would have consented to be crushed beneath its ruins, provided those ruins were to give place to his ideal plan of the government of reason. Brissot was one of those mercenary scribes who write for those who pay best. He had written on all subjects, for every minister; especially Turgot. Criminal laws, political economy, diplomacy, literature, philosophy, even libels,—his pen was at the hire of the first comer. Seeking the support of celebrated and influential men, he had adulated all from Voltaire and Franklin down to Marat. Known to Madame de Genlis, he had, through her, some acquaintance with the Duc d'Orleans. Sent to London by the minister on one of those missions which are nameless, he there became connected with the editor of the Courrier de l'Europe, a French journal, printed in London, and the boldness of whose style was offensive at the court of the Tuileries. He engaged himself to Swinton, the proprietor of this newspaper, and edited it in a manner favorable to the views of Vergennes. He knew at Swinton's several writers, amongst others one Morande. These libellers, outcasts of society, frequently then become the refuse of the pen, and live at the same time on the disgraces of vice and in the pay of spies. Their collision infected Brissot. He was or appeared to be sometimes their accomplice. Hideous blotches thus stain his life, and were cruelly revived by his enemies, when the time came in which he was compelled to appeal to public esteem.

Returning to France at the first symptoms of the Revolution, he watched its successive phases, with the ambition of an impatient man, and with the indecision of one not knowing what part to take. He was frequently wrong. He compromised himself by his devotion, too early displayed, towards certain men who had seemed to him for a moment to be all powerful, especially towards La Fayette. Editor of the Patriote Français, he had occasionally put forth revolutionary feelers, and flattered the future by going even faster than the factions themselves. He had even been disowned by Robespierre. "Whilst I content myself," said Robespierre, referring to him, "with defending the principles of liberty, without opening any other question, what are you doing, Brissot and Condorcet? Known until now by your great moderation and your connection with La Fayette, for a long time followers of the aristocratic club of '89, you suddenly blazon forth the word Republic. You issue a journal entitled the Republican! Then minds become in a ferment. The mere word Republic throws division amongst patriots, and affords to our enemies a pretext which they seek for announcing that there exists in France a party which conspires against the monarchy and the constitution. Under this title we are persecuted, and peaceable citizens are sacrificed on the altars of their country! At this name we are transformed into factions, and the Revolution is made to recede, perhaps, half a century. It was at the same moment that Brissot came to the Jacobins, where he had never before appeared, to propose a republic of which the simplest rules of prudence had forbidden us to speak in the National Assembly. By what fatality did Brissot find himself there? I would fain discover no craft in his conduct; I would prefer detecting only imprudence and folly. But now that his connection with La Fayette and Narbonne are no longer a mystery—now that he no longer dissimulates his schemes of dangerous innovations, let him clearly understand that the nation will at once and effectually break through all the plots framed during so many years by pitiful intriguers."

So spake Robespierre, jealous by anticipation, and yet just, on Brissot's presenting himself as a candidate. The Revolution rejected him, the Counter-revolution repudiated him no less. Brissot's old allies in London, especially Morande, returned to Paris under cover of the troublous times, revealed to the Parisians in the Argus, and in placards, the secret intrigues and the disgraceful literary career of their former associate. They quoted actual letters, in which Brissot had lied unblushingly as to his name, the condition of his family, and his father's fortune, in order to acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending into France, and the propagation of, odious pamphlets by Morande. The journals hostile to his election seized on these scandalous facts, and held them up to public obloquy. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the funds of the district of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, of which he was president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. His defence was laboured and obscure; yet it was held by the club of the Rue de la Michodière sufficient proof of his innocence and integrity. Some journals, solely occupied with the political bearing of his life, took up his defence, and made loud complaints against his calumny. Manuel, his friend, who edited a vile journal, wrote thus, to console him:—"These ordures of calumny, spread abroad at the moment of scrutiny, always end by leaving a dirty stain on those who scatter them. But it is allowing a triumph to the enemies of the people, to repulse thus a man who fearlessly attacks them. They give me votes, in spite of my drivellings, and my love of the bottle. Leave 'Père Duchesne'[4] alone, and let us nominate Brissot; he is a better man than I am."

Marat, in his Ami du Peuple, wrote thus ambiguously of Brissot:—"Brissot," says the Friend of the People, "was never, in my eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy? Poor Brissot, thou art the victim of a court valet, of a base hypocrite!—why lend thy paw to La Fayette? Why, thou must expect to experience the fate of all men of indecision. Thou hast displeased every body; thou canst never make thy way. If thou hast one atom of proper feeling left, hasten, and scratch out thy name from the list of candidates for the approaching general election."

Thus appeared on the scene for the first time, in the midst of the hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from the general contempt accumulated on his name from the faults of his youth, in order to enter on the gravity of his political career—a mingled character, half intrigue, half virtue. Brissot, destined to serve as the centre of a rallying point to the party of the Gironde, had, by anticipation in his character, all there was in after days, of destiny in his party, of intrigue and patriotism, of faction and martyrdom. The other marked candidates in Paris, were, Pastoret, a man of the South, prudent and skilful as a Southron steering ably betwixt parties, giving sufficient guarantee to the Revolution to be accepted by it, enough devotion to the court to retain its secret confidence; borne hither and thither by the alternating favours of the two opinions, like a man who seeks fortune for his talent in the Revolution, but never looking for it beyond the limits of the just and honourable. Lacepede, Cérutti, Héraut de Séchelles, and Gouvion, La Fayette's aide-de-camp. The elections of the department occupied but little attention. The National Assembly had exhausted the country of its characters and its talents; the ostracism it had exercised had imposed on France but secondary ability. There was but little enthusiasm for untried men: the public eyes were only fixed on the names about to disappear. A country cannot contain a twofold renown: that of France was departing with the members of the dissolved Assembly—another France was about to rise.

---