"If ordered to remain by the Queen, I will stay, like a soldier who has his furlough but remains for the battle; but if I do so, I become more than weak, a traitor."
"Explain: I do not understand," she said, slightly hurt.
"Perhaps the Queen takes the dissolved Assembly as her enemy?"
"Let us define matters; in that body were friends of mine. You will not deny that the majority were hostile."
"It never passed but one bill really an act of hostility to your Majesty and the King; that was the decree that none of its members could belong to the Legislative. That snatched the buckler from your friends' arms."
"But also the sword from our foemen's hand, methinks."
"Alas, you are wrong. The blow comes from Robespierre and is dreadful like all from that man. As things were we knew whom we had to meet; with all uncertainty we strike in the fog. Robespierre wishes to force France to take the rulers from the class above us or beneath. Above us there is nothing, the aristocracy having fled; but anyway the electors would not seek representatives among the noble. The people will choose deputies from below us and the next House will be democratic, with slight variations."
The Queen began to be alarmed from following this statement.
"I have studied the new-comers: particularly those from the South," went on Barnave; "they are nameless men eager to acquire fame, the more as they are all young. They are to be feared as their orders are to make war on the priests and nobles; nothing is said as to the King, but if he will be merely the executive, he may be forgiven the past."
"How? they will forgive him? I thought it lay in the King to pardon?" exclaimed insulted majesty.