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.