In the absence of the king, the Constitution was sworn to by the sad, cold House, all aware that the impotent laws would not endure a year.
As these motions were equivalent to saying, "there is no longer a king." Money, as usual, took fright; down went the stocks dreadfully, and the bankers took alarm.
There was a revulsion in favor of the king, and his speech in the House was so applauded that he went to the theater that evening in high glee. That night he wrote to the powers of Europe that he had subscribed to the Constitution.
So far, the House had been tolerant, mild to the refractory priests, and paying pensions to the princes and nobles who had fled abroad.
We shall see how the nobles recompensed this mildness.
When they were debating on paying the old and infirm priests, though they might be opposed to the Reformation, news came from Avignon of a massacre of revolutionists by the religious fanatics, and a bloody reprisal of the other party.
As for the runaway nobles, still drawing revenue from their country, this is what they were doing.
They reconciled Austria with Prussia, making friends of two enemies. They induced Russia to forbid the French embassador going about the St. Petersburg streets, and sent a minister to the refugees at Coblentz. They made Berne punish a town for singing the "It shall go on." They led the kings to act roughly; Russia and Sweden sent back with unbroken seals Louis XVI.'s dispatches announcing his adhesion to the Constitution.
Spain refused to receive it, and a French revolutionist would have been burned by the Inquisition only for his committing suicide.
Venice threw on St. Mark's Place the corpse of a man strangled in the night by the Council of Ten, with the plain inscription: "This was a Freemason."