Part II.
FROM THE FESTIVAL OF THE 14TH OF JULY TO THE CLOSE OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
Blesses the standard of France at festival of the 14th of July.—Increasing financial distress.—M. de Talleyrand’s views.—Civil constitution of the clergy.—M. de Talleyrand’s conduct.—Refuses archbishopric of Paris.—Letter to editors of Chronicle.—Mirabeau’s death.—Sketch of his career, and relations with M. de Talleyrand, who attends his death-bed.—Probabilities as to his having initiated M. de Talleyrand into plots of court.—Leaves M. de Talleyrand his intended speech on the law of succession, which regulated the present state of the law in France, and which M. de Talleyrand read in the National Assembly.—M. de Talleyrand suspended from his episcopal functions, and quits the Church.—The King’s flight.—Conduct and views of M. de Talleyrand.—Wishes to aid the King.—Foolish conduct of court party.—Fatal decree of National Assembly, forbidding the re-election of its members.—M. de Talleyrand’s project of education.—Assembly closes the 13th of September, 1791.—M. de Talleyrand goes to England, January 1792.
I.
We are arrived at the festival of the 14th of July, held to celebrate the destruction of the Bastille, and to do honour to the new government which had risen on its ruins: let us pause for a moment on that day of joy!
An immense and magnificent amphitheatre is erected on the Champ de Mars: there the hereditary sovereign of France, and the temporary president of an elected assembly—the joint symbols of two ideas and of two epochs—are seated on two equal thrones, resplendent with the arms which the nation has taken from its ancient kings; and there is the infant prince, on whom an exulting people look kindly as the inheritor of his father’s engagements, and who is to perpetuate the race of Saint Louis: and there is that queen, “decorating and cheering the sphere she moves in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy;” and there that royal maiden, beauteous with the charms of the palace, blessed with the virtues of the cloister—a princess, a saint—destined to be a martyr! And there is the vain but honest Lafayette, leaning on his citizen sword: and there the terrible Mirabeau—his long hair streaming to the wind: and there that well-known and still memorable Assembly, prematurely proud of its vaunted work, which, alas! like the spectacle we are assisting at, is to be the mere pageant of a day. And, behold, in yonder balcony, the most graceful and splendid court in Europe, for such even at that time was still the court of France; and lo! in the open space, yon confederated bands, bearing their respective banners, and representing every portion of that great family which at this moment is rejoicing over the triumph it has achieved. On a sudden the sky—the light of which mingles so well with the joy of men, but which had hitherto been dark and sullen—on a sudden the sky clears up, and the sun blends his pomp with that of this noble ceremony! And now, robed in his pontifical garments, and standing on an altar thronged by three hundred priests, in long white robes and tricoloured girdles, the Bishop of Autun blesses the great standard, the oriflamme of France, no longer the ensign of war, but the sign and token of peace between the past and the future—between the old recollections and the new aspirations of the French people.
Who, that had been present that day in Paris, could have believed that those who wept tenderly with the children of Bearne, at the foot of the statue of Henry IV., would so soon laugh horribly round the scaffold of his descendant? that the gay multitude, wandering in the Champs Elysées, amidst garlands of light, and breathing sounds of gentle happiness and affection, would so soon be the ferocious mob, massacreing in the prisons, murdering in the public streets, dancing round the guillotine dripping with innocent blood? that the monarch, the court, the deputies, every popular and princely image of this august pageant, the very forms of the religion with which it was consecrated, would in two or three brief years be scoffingly cast away: and that even the high priest of that gorgeous solemnity, no longer attached to his sacred calling, would be wandering a miserable exile on foreign shores, banished as a traitor to the liberty for which he had sacrificed the prejudices of his caste, the predilections of his family, the honours and wealth of his profession?
II.
From the 14th of July, 1789, to the 14th of July, 1790, the scenes which were comprehended in this, which may be called the first act in the great drama then agitating France, were upon the whole such as rather to excite the hopes than the fears of mankind; but from the latter period the aspect of things greatly changed, and almost each day became marked by some disappointment as to the success of a favourite scheme, or the fortune of a popular statesman.
On the 4th of September, 1790, M. Necker left almost unnoticed, and altogether unregretted, that Paris to which but a year before he had returned amidst unanimous acclamation. About the same time, Mirabeau began to be suspected; and the shouts of “Vive Lafayette!” were not unfrequently changed into “à bas Lafayette!”[15] by the ever fickle multitude. At this period also it became apparent that the sale of the church property, which, properly managed, might have restored order to the finances, was likely, on the contrary, to render the national bankruptcy more complete.