As to the various stories of his incessant schemes and complicated manœuvres for exciting the populace, debauching the soldiery, and seizing the crown, they are, in my opinion, no more worthy of credit than the tales which at the same period were equally circulated of Louis XVI.’s drunkenness, and Marie-Antoinette’s debaucheries. Belonging to those whom Tacitus has described as “men loving idleness—though hating quiet,” seeking popularity more than power, and with a character easily modelled by circumstances, I am by no means certain, that if M. de Talleyrand did think of bestowing on him what was afterwards called a “citizen crown,” (it must be remembered that he had not then been lowered and disgraced by the follies or crimes into which he was subsequently led), the plan was not the best which could have been adopted. But there was one great and insurmountable obstacle to this design.
General Lafayette commanded the National Guard of Paris, and although his popularity was already on the wane, he was still—Mirabeau being dead—the most powerful citizen that had been raised up by the Revolution. He did not want to run new risks, nor to acquire greater power, nor to have a monarch with more popularity or more authority than the runaway king.
Courageous rather than audacious, more avid of popularity than of power, a chivalric knight-errant, an amiable enthusiast, rather than a great captain, or a practical politician, the part which suited him was that of parading himself before the people as the guardian of the constitution, and before the sovereign as the idol of the nation. To this part he wished to confine himself; and the monarch under whom he could play it most easily was Louis XVI. Nor was this all.
Ambitious men may agree as to sharing the attributes of office; vain men will not agree as to sharing the pleasure of applause: and it is said that Lafayette never forgot that there was another bust, that of the Duc d’Orléans, carried about the streets of Paris together with his own, on the memorable day which saw the destruction of the Bastille. To any idea, therefore, of the Duc d’Orléans as King of France, he was decidedly opposed.
X.
Thus, after making just that sort of effort in favour of the younger branch of the Bourbons which left him free to support the elder one, if such effort proved abortive, M. de Talleyrand finally declared for Louis XVI., as the only person who could be monarch, if a monarchy could be preserved; and was also for giving this prince such a position as he might honourably accept, with functions that he might really fulfil.
The King himself, it must be added, was now in a better disposition than he had hitherto been for frankly accepting the conditions of the new existence proposed to him.
A hero, or rather a saint, when it was required of his fortitude to meet danger or to undergo suffering, his nature was one of those which shrink from exertion, and prefer endurance to a struggle for either victory or escape.
It was with difficulty that he had been so far roused into action as to attempt his recent expedition; he had been disgusted with its trouble, more than awed by its peril. Death itself seemed preferable to another such effort.
He had seen, likewise, from the feeling of the provinces, and even from the infidelity of the troops, who, sent to escort him, might have attempted his rescue; but who, when told to cry, “Vive le Roi!” cried, “Vive la Nation!” that, even if he had reached M. de Bouillé’s camp, it would have been difficult for that general, notwithstanding his firmness of character and military ability, to have placed the sovereign of France in any position within the French territory from which he might have dictated to, or even treated with, the French people. To quit Paris, therefore, a second time was evidently to quit France and to unite himself with, and to be subordinate to, that party of émigrés which had always preferred his younger brother, whose presumption had become insulting to his authority and offensive to Marie-Antoinette’s pride.