"I am not one of those," said he, "who term this event a disaster; this day would be the most glorious of the Revolution, did you but know how to turn it to your advantage. The king has chosen to quit his post at the moment of our most deadly perils, both at home and abroad. The Assembly has lost its credit; all men's minds are excited by the approaching elections. The emigres are at Coblentz. The emperor and the king of Sweden are at Brussels; our harvests are ripe to feed their troops; but three millions of men are under arms in France, and this league of Europe may easily be vanquished. I fear neither Leopold, nor the king of Sweden. That which alone terrifies me, seems to reassure all others. It is the fact that since this morning all our enemies affect to use the same language as ourselves. All men are united, and in appearance wear the same aspect. It is impossible that all can feel the same joy at the flight of a king who possessed a revenue of forty millions of francs, and who distributed all the offices of state amongst his adherents and our enemies; there are traitors, then, among us; there is a secret understanding between the fugitive king and these traitors who have remained at Paris. Read the king's manifesto, and the whole plot will be there unveiled. The king, the emperor, the king of Sweden, d'Artois, Conde, all the fugitives, all these brigands, are about to march against us. A paternal manifesto will appear, in which the king will talk of his love of peace, and even of liberty; whilst at the same time the traitors in the capital and the departments will represent you, on their part, as the leaders of the civil war. Thus the Revolution will be stifled in the embraces of hypocritical despotism and intimidated moderatism.

"Look already at the Assembly: in twenty decrees the king's flight is termed carrying off by force (enlevement). To whom does it intrust the safety of the people? To a minister of foreign affairs, under the inspection of diplomatic committee. Who is the minister? A traitor whom I have unceasingly denounced to you, the persecutor of the patriot soldiers, the upholder of the aristocrat officers. What is the committee? A committee of traitors composed of all our enemies beneath the garb of patriots. And the minister for foreign affairs, who is he? A traitor, a Montmorin, who but a short month ago declared a perfidious adoration of the constitution. And Delissart, who is he? A traitor, to whom Necker has bequeathed his mantle to cover his plots and conspiracies.

"Do you not see the coalition of these men with the king, and the king with the European league? That will crush us! In an instant you will see all the men of 1789—mayor, general, ministers, orators,—enter this room. How can you escape Antony?" continued he, alluding to La Fayette. "Antony commands the legions that are about to avenge Caesar; and Octavius, Caesar's nephew, commands the legions of the republic.

"How can the republic hope to avoid destruction? We are continually told of the necessity of uniting ourselves; but when Antony encamped at the side of Lepidus, and all the foes to freedom were united to those who termed themselves its defenders, nought remained for Brutus and Cassius, save to die.

"It is to this point that this feigned unanimity, this perfidious reconciliation of patriots, tends. Yes, this is the fate prepared for you. I know that by daring to unveil these conspiracies I sharpen a thousand daggers against my own life. I know the fate that awaits me; but if, when almost unknown in the National Assembly, I, amongst the earliest apostles of liberty, sacrificed my life to the cause of truth, of humanity, of my country; to-day, when I have been so amply repaid for this sacrifice, by such marks of universal goodwill, consideration, and regard, I shall look at death as a mercy, if it prevents my witnessing such misfortunes. I have tried the Assembly, let them in their turn try me."

XIX.

These words so artfully combined, and calculated to fill every breast with suspicion, were hailed like the last speech of a martyr for liberty. All eyes were suffused with tears. "We will die with you," cried Camille Desmoulins, extending his arms towards Robespierre, as though he would fain embrace him. His excitable and changeable spirit was borne away by the breath of each new enthusiastic impulse. He passed from the arms of La Fayette into those of Robespierre like a courtezan. Eight hundred persons rose en masse; and by their attitudes, their gestures, their spontaneous and unanimous inspiration, offered one of those most imposing tableaux, that prove how great is the effect of oratory, passion, and circumstance over an assembled people. After they had all individually sworn to defend Robespierre's life, they were informed of the arrival of the ministers and members of the Assembly who had belonged to the club in '89, and who in this perilous state of their country, had come to fraternise with the Jacobins.

"Monsieur le President," cried Danton, "if the traitors venture to present themselves, I undertake solemnly either that my head shall fall on the scaffold, or to prove that their heads should roll at the feet of the nation they have betrayed."

The deputies entered: Danton, recognising La Fayette amongst them, mounted the tribunal, and addressing the general, said:—"It is my turn to speak, and I will speak as though I were writing a history for the use of future ages. How do you dare, M. de La Fayette, to join the friends of the constitution; you, who are a friend and partisan of the system of the two chambers invented by the priest Sieyes, a system destructive of the constitution and liberty? Did you not yourself tell me that the project of M. Mounier was too execrable for any one to venture to reproduce it, but that it was possible to cause an equivalent to it to be accepted by the Assembly? I dare you to deny this fact—that damns you. How comes it that the king in his proclamation uses the same language as yourself? How have you dared to infringe an order of the day on the circulation of the pamphlets of the defenders of the people, whilst you grant the protection of your bayonets to cowardly writers, the destroyers of the constitution? Why did you bring back prisoners, and as it were in triumph, the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine, who wished to destroy the last stronghold of tyranny at Vincennes? Why, on the evening of this expedition to Vincennes, did you protect in the Tuileries assassins armed with poignards to favour the king's escape? Explain to me by what chance, on the 21st June, the Tuileries was guarded by the company of the grenadiers of the Rue de l'Oratoire, that you had punished on the 18th of April for having opposed the king's departure? Let us not deceive ourselves: the king's flight is only the result of a plot; there has been a secret understanding, and you, M. de La Fayette, who lately staked your head for the king's safety, do you by appearing in this assembly seek your own condemnation? The people must have vengeance; they are wearied of being thus alternately braved or deceived. If my voice is unheard here, if our weak indulgence for the enemies of our country continually endanger it, I appeal to posterity, and leave it to them to judge between us."

M. de La Fayette, thus attacked, made no reply to these strong appeals; he merely said that he had come to join the assembly, because it was there that all good citizens should hasten in perilous times; and he then left the place. The assembly having issued a decree next day calling on the general to appear and justify himself, he wrote that he would do so at a future period; he however never did so. But the motions of Robespierre and Danton did not in the least injure his influence over the national guard. Danton on that day displayed the greatest audacity. M. de La Fayette had the proofs of the orator's venality in his possession—he had received from M. de Montmorin 100,000 francs. Danton knew that M. de La Fayette was well aware of this transaction; but he also knew that La Fayette could not accuse him without naming M. de Montmorin, and without also accusing himself of participation in this shameful traffic, that supplied the funds of the civil list. This double secret kept them mutually in check, and obliged the orator and general to maintain a degree of reserve that lessened the fury of the contest. Lameth replied to Danton, and spoke in favour of concord. The violent resolutions proposed by Robespierre and Danton had no weight that day at the Jacobins' Club. The peril that threatened them taught the people wisdom, and their instinct forbade their dividing their force before that which was unknown.

XX.

The same evening the National Assembly discussed and adopted an address to the French nation, in these terms:—

"A great crime has been committed. The king and his family have been carried off, (the continuance of this pretended enlevement of the king excited loud murmurs,) but your representatives will triumph over all these obstacles. France wishes to be free, and she shall be; the Revolution will not retrograde. We have saved the law by resolving that our decrees shall be the law. We have saved the nation by sending to the army reinforcements of 300,000 men. We have saved public peace by placing it under the safeguard of the zeal and patriotism of the armed citizens. In this position we await our enemies. In a manifesto dictated to the king by those who have offered violence to his affection for his people, you are accused—the constitution is accused—the law of impunity of the 6th of October is accused. The nation is more just, for she does not accuse the king of the crimes of his ancestors. (Applause.)

"But the king swore on the 14th of July to protect this constitution; he has therefore consented to perjure himself. The changes made in the constitution of the kingdom are laid to the charge of the soidisant factious. A few factious? that is not sufficient; we are 26,000,000 of factious. (Loud applause.) We have re-constructed the power, we have preserved the monarchy, because we believe it useful to France. We have doubtless reformed it, but it was to save it from its abuses and its excesses; we have granted a yearly sum of 50,000,000 of francs to maintain the legitimate splendour of the throne. We have reserved to ourselves the right of declaring war, because we would not that the blood of the people should belong to the ministers. Frenchmen! all is organised, every man is at his post. The Assembly watches over all. You have nought to fear save from yourselves, should your just emotion lead you to commit any violence or disorders. The people who seek to be free should remain unmoved in great crises.

"Behold Paris, and imitate the example of the capital. All goes on as usual; the tyrants will be deceived. Before they can bend France beneath their yoke, the whole nation must be annihilated. Should despotism venture to attempt it, it will be vanquished; or even though it triumph, it will triumph over nought save ruins!" (Loud and unanimous applause followed the conclusion of the address.)

The sitting which had been suspended during an hour, re-opened at half-past nine. Much agitation prevailed in the chamber, and the words He is arrested! He is arrested! ran along the benches, and from the benches to the tribune. The president announced that he had just received a packet containing several letters which he would read; at the same time recommending them to abstain from any marks of approbation or disapprobation. He then opened the packet amidst a profound silence, and read the letters of the municipal authorities at Varennes and of St. Menehould brought by M. Mangin, surgeon, at Varennes. The Assembly then nominated three commissioners out of the members to bring the king back to Paris. These three commissioners were Barnave, Petion, and Latour-Maubourg, and they instantly started off to fulfil their mission. Let us now for a brief space leave Paris a prey to all the different emotions of surprise, joy, and indignation excited by the flight and arrest of the king.

XXI.

The night at Varennes had been passed by the king, the queen, and the people in alternate feelings of hope and terror. Whilst the children, fatigued with a long day's journey, and the heat of the weather, slept soundly, the king and queen, guarded by the municipal guards of Varennes, discussed, in a low voice, the danger of their position, their pious sister, Madame Elizabeth, prayed by their side; her kingdom was, indeed, "in heaven." Nothing had induced her to remain at the court, from which she was estranged, alike by her piety and her renouncement of all worldly pleasure, but her affection for her brother, and she had shared only the sorrows and sufferings of the throne.

The prisoners were far from despairing yet; they had no doubt that M. de Bouille, warned by one of the officers whom he had stationed on the road, would march all night to their assistance; and they attributed his delay to the necessity of collecting a sufficient force to overpower the numerous troops of national guards whom the sound of the tocsin had summoned to Varennes. But at each instant they expected to see him appear, and the least movement of the populace, the slightest clash of arms in the streets, seemed to announce his arrival; the courier despatched to Paris by the authorities of Varennes to receive the orders of the Assembly, only left at three o'clock in the morning. He could not reach Paris in less than twenty hours, and would require as much more for his return; and the Assembly would require, at least three or four hours more to deliberate; thus M. de Bouille must have forty-eight hours' start of any orders from Paris.

Moreover, in what state would Paris be? what would have happened there at the unexpected announcement of the king's departure? Had not terror or repentance taken possession of every mind; would not anarchy have destroyed the feeble barriers that an anarchical assembly might have opposed to it? Would not the cry of treason have been the first signal of alarm? La Fayette have been torn to pieces as a traitor, and the national guard disbanded? Would not the well-intentioned and loyal citizens have again obtained the mastery over the factious and turbulent in the confusion and terror that would prevail? Who would give orders? who would execute them?

The nation trembling, and in disorder, would fall perhaps at the feet of its king. Such were the chimaeras, the last fond hopes of this unfortunate family, and on which they sustained their courage, during this fatal night, in the small and suffocating room into which they were all crowded.

The king had been allowed to communicate with several officers: M. de Guoguelas, M. de Damas, M. de Choiseul had seen him. The procureur syndic, and the municipal officers of Varennes, showed both respect and pity for their king, even in the execution of what they believed to be their duty. The people do not pass at once from respect to outrage. There is a moment of indecision in every sacrilegious act, in which they seem yet to reverence that which they are about to destroy. The authorities of Varennes and M. Sausse, although believing they were the saviours of the nation, were yet far from wishing to offend the king, and guarded him as much as their sovereign as their captive. This did not escape the king's notice; he flattered himself that at the first demand made by M. de Bouille, respect would prevail over patriotism, and that he would be set at liberty, and he expressed this belief to his officers.

One of them, M. Derlons, who commanded the squadron of hussars stationed at Dun, between Varennes and Stenay, had been informed of the king's arrest at two o'clock in the morning by the commander of the detachment at Varennes: having escaped this town, M. Derlons, without awaiting any orders from the general, and anticipating them, he ordered his hussars to mount, and galloped to Varennes, determined to rescue the king by force. On his arrival at the gates of that town, he found them barricaded and defended by a numerous body of national guards, who refused to allow the hussars to enter the town. M. Derlons dismounted, and leaving his men outside, demanded to see the king, which was consented to. His aim was to inform the king that M. de Bouille was about to march thither at the head of the royal Allemand regiment, and also to assure himself, if it was impossible for his squadron to force the obstacles, to break down the barricades in the upper town, and carry off the king. The barricades appeared to him impregnable to cavalry, he therefore gained admittance to the king, and asked him what were his orders. "Tell M. de Bouille," returned the king, "that I am a prisoner, and can give no orders. I much fear he can do no more for me, but I pray him to do all he can." M. Derlons, who was an Alsatian, and spoke German, wished to say a few words in that language to the queen, in order that no person present might understand what passed. "Speak French, sir," said the queen, "we are overheard." M. Derlons said no more, but withdrew in despair; but he remained with his troop at the gates of Varennes, awaiting the arrival of the superior forces of M. de Bouille.

XXII.

The aide-de-camp of M. de La Fayette, M. Romeuf, despatched by that general, and bearer of the order of the Assembly, arrived at Varennes at half-past seven. The queen, who knew him personally, reproached him in the most pathetic manner with the odious mission with which his general had charged him. M. Romeuf sought in vain to calm her indignation by every mark of respect and devotion compatible with the rigour of his orders. The queen then changing from invectives to tears, gave a free vent to her grief. M. Romeuf having laid the order of the Assembly on the Dauphin's bed, the queen seized the paper, threw it on the ground, and trampled it under her feet, exclaiming, that such a paper would sully her son's bed. "In the name of your safety, of your glory, madam," said the young officer, "master your grief; would you suffer any one but myself to witness such a fit of despair?"

The preparations for their departure were hastened, through fear, lest the troops of M. de Bouille might march on the town, or cut them off. The king used every means in his power to delay them, for each minute gained gave them a fresh hope of safety, and disputed them one by one. At the moment they were entering the carriage, one of the queen's women feigned a sudden and alarming illness. The queen refused to start without her, and only yielded at last to threats of force, and the shouts of the impatient populace. She would suffer no one to touch her son, but carried him herself to the carriage; and the royal cortege escorted by three or four thousand national guards, moved slowly towards Paris.

XXIII.

What was M. de Bouille doing during this long and agonising night the king passed at Varennes? He had, as we have already seen, passed the night at the gates of Dun, two leagues from Varennes, awaiting the couriers who were to inform him of the king's approach. At four in the morning, fearing to be discovered, and having seen no one, he regained Stenay, in order to be nearer his troops, in case any accident had happened to the king. At half-past four he was at the gates of Stenay, when the two officers whom he had left there the previous evening, and the commanding officer of the squadron that had abandoned him, arrived and informed him that the king had been arrested since eleven o'clock at night. Stupified and astonished at being informed so late he instantly ordered the royal Allemand regiment, which was at Stenay, to mount and follow him. The colonel of this regiment had received the previous evening orders to keep the horses saddled. This order had not been executed, and the regiment lost three quarters of an hour, in spite of the repeated messages of M. de Bouille, who sent his own son to the barracks. The general was powerless without this regiment, and no sooner were they outside the town than M. de Bouille endeavoured to ascertain its disposition towards the king. "Your king," said he, "who was hastening hither to dwell amongst you, has been stopped by the inhabitants of Varennes, within a few leagues. Will you let him remain a prisoner, exposed to every insult at the hands of the national guards? Here are his orders: he awaits you; he counts every moment. Let us march to Varennes. Let us hasten to deliver him, and restore him to the nation and liberty."

Loud acclamations followed this speech. M. de Bouille distributed 500 or 600 louis amongst the soldiers, and the regiment marched forward.

Stenay is at least nine leagues from Varennes, and the road very hilly and bad. M. de Bouille, however, used all possible dispatch, and at a little distance from Varennes he met the advanced guard of the regiment, halted at the entrance of a little wood, defended by a body of the national guard. M. de Bouille ordered them to charge, and putting himself at the head of the troop, arrived at Varennes at a quarter to nine, closely followed by the regiment. Whilst reconnoitring the town, previous to an attack, he observed a troop of hussars, who appeared also to watch the town. It was the squadron from Dun, commanded by M. Derlons, who had passed the night here, awaiting reinforcements. M. Derlons hastened to inform the general that the king had left the town more than an hour and a half; he added, the bridge was broken, the streets barricaded; that the hussars of Clermont and Varennes had fraternised with the people, and the commanders of the detachments, MM. de Choiseul, de Damas, and de Guoguelas, were prisoners. M. de Bouille, baffled, but not discouraged, resolved to follow the king, and rescue him from the hands of the national guard. He despatched officers to find a ford by which they could pass the river; but, unfortunately, although one existed, they were unable to find it.

Whilst thus engaged, he learnt that the garrisons of Metz and Verdun were advancing with a train of artillery to the aid of the people. The country was swarming with troops and national guards. The troops began to show symptoms of hesitation; the horses, fatigued by nine leagues over a bad road, could not sustain the speed necessary to overtake the king at Sainte Menehould. All energy deserted them with hope. The regiment turned round, and M. de Bouille led them back in silence to Stenay; thence, followed only by a few of the officers most implicated, he gained Luxembourg, and passed the frontier amidst a shower of balls, and wishing for death more than he shunned the punishment.

XXIV.

The royal carriages, however, rolled rapidly along the road to Chalons, attended by the national guard, who relieved each other in order to escort them on; the whole population lined the road on either side, to gaze upon a king brought back in triumph by the nation that believed itself betrayed. The pikes and bayonets of the national guards could scarcely force them a passage through this dense throng, that at each instant grew more and more numerous, and who were never weary of uttering cries of derision and menace, accompanied by the most furious gestures.

The carriages pursued their journey amidst a torrent of abuse, and the clamour of the people recommenced at every turn of the wheel. It was a Calvary of sixty leagues, every step of which was a torture. One gentleman, M. de Dampierre, an old man, accustomed all his life to venerate the king, having advanced towards the carriage to show some marks of respectful compassion to his master, was instantly massacred before their eyes, and the royal family narrowly escaped passing over his bleeding corpse. Fidelity was the only unpardonable crime amongst this band of savages. The king and queen, who had already made the sacrifice of their lives, had summoned all their dignity and courage, in order to die worthily. Passive courage was Louis XVI.'s virtue, as though Heaven, who destined him to suffer martyrdom, had gifted him with heroic endurance, that cannot resist, but can die. The queen found in her blood and her pride sufficient hatred for the people, to return with inward scorn the insults with which they profaned her. Madame Elizabeth prayed mentally for divine assistance; and the two children wondered at the hatred of the people they had been taught to love, and whom they now saw only a prey to the most violent fury. The august family would never have reached Paris alive, had not the commissioners of the Assembly, who by their presence overawed the people, arrived in time to subdue and control this growing sedition.

The commissioners met the carriages between Dormans and Epernay, and read to the king and people the order of the Assembly, giving them the absolute command of the troops and national guards along the line; and which enjoined them to watch not only over the king's security, but also to maintain the respect due to royalty, represented in his person. Barnave and Petion hastened to enter the king's carriage, to share his danger, and shield him with their bodies. They succeeded in preserving him from death, but not from outrage. The fury of the people, kept aloof from the carriages, found vent further off; and all persons suspected of feeling the least sympathy were brutally ill-treated.

An ecclesiastic having approached the berlin, and exhibited some traces of respect and sorrow on his features, was seized by the people, thrown under the horses' feet, and was on the point of being massacred before the queen's eyes, when Barnave, with a noble impulse, leant out of the carriage. "Frenchmen," exclaimed he, "will you, a nation of brave men, become a people of murderers?" Madame Elizabeth, struck with admiration at his courageous interference, and fearing lest he might spring out, and be in his turn torn to pieces by the people, held him by his coat whilst he addressed the mob. From this moment the pious princess, the queen, and the king himself conceived a secret esteem for Barnave. A generous heart amidst so many cruel ones inspired them with a species of confidence in the young depute. They had known him only as a leader of faction, and by his voice heard amidst all their misfortunes; and they were astonished to find a respectful protector in the man whom they had hitherto looked upon as an insolent foe.

Barnave's features were marked, yet attractive and open; his manners polished, his language elegant; his bearing saddened by the aspect of so much beauty, so much majesty, and so great a reverse of fortune. The king in the intervals of calm and silence frequently spoke to him, and discoursed of the events of the day. Barnave replied, with the tone of a man devoted to liberty, but faithful still to the throne; and who in his plans of regeneration, never separated the nation from the throne. Full of attention to the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and the royal children, he strove by every means in his power to hide from them the perils and humiliations of the journey. Constrained, no doubt, by the presence of his rough colleague, Petion, if he did not openly avow the feeling of pity, admiration, and respect which had conquered him during the journey, he showed it in his actions, and a tacit treaty was concluded by looks. The royal family felt that amidst this wreck of all their hopes they had yet gained Barnave. All his subsequent conduct justified the confidence of the queen. Audacious, when opposed to tyranny, he was powerless against weakness, beauty, and misfortune; and this lost him his life, but rendered his memory glorious. Until then he had been only eloquent; he now showed that he possessed sensibility. Petion, on the contrary, remained cold as a sectarian, and rude as a parvenu; he affected a brusque familiarity with the royal family, eating in the queen's presence, and throwing the rind of fruit out of the window, at the risk of striking the king's face. When Madame Elizabeth poured him out some wine, he raised his glass without thanking her to show that he had enough. Louis XVI. having asked him if he was in favour of the system of the two chambers, or for the republic—"I should be in favour of a republic," returned Petion, "if I thought my country sufficiently ripe for this form of government." The king, offended, made no reply, and did not once speak until they arrived at Paris.

The commissioners had written from Dormans to the Assembly, to inform them what road the king would take, and at what day and hour he would arrive. The approach to Paris offered increasing danger, owing to the numbers and fury of the populace through which the king had to pass. The Assembly redoubled its energy and precaution to assure the inviolability of the king's person. The people, too, recovered the sentiment of their own dignity before this great success fate granted them: they would not dishonour their own triumph. Thousands of placards were stuck on the walls—"Whoever applauds the king shall be beaten; whoever insults him shall be hung." The king had slept at Meaux, and the commissioners advised the Assembly to sit permanently, in order to be in readiness for any unforeseen event that might take place on the king's arrival at Paris; and the Assembly, consequently, did not dissolve. The hero of the day, the author of the king's arrest, Drouet, son of the post-master of Sainte Menehould, appeared before it, and gave the following evidence:—"I have served in Conde's regiment of dragoons, and my comrade, Guillaume, in the Queen's dragoons. The 21st of June, at seven in the evening, two carriages and eleven horses arrived at Sainte Menehould, and I recognised the king and queen; but, fearful of being deceived, I resolved to ascertain the truth of this by arriving at Varennes, by a bye-road, before the carriages. It was eleven o'clock, and quite dark, when I reached Varennes; the carriages arrived also, and were delayed by a dispute between the couriers and the postilions, who refused to go any farther. I said to my comrade, 'Guillaume, are you a good patriot?' 'Do not doubt it,' replied he. 'Well, then, the king is here; let us arrest him.' We overturned a cart, filled with goods, under the arch of the bridge; and when the carriage arrived, demanded their passports. 'We are in a hurry, gentlemen,' said the queen. However, we insisted, and made them alight at the house of the procureur of the district; then, of his own accord, Louis XVI. said to us, 'Behold your king—your queen—and my children! Treat us with that respect that Frenchmen have always shown to their king.' We, however, detained him; the national guards hastened to the town, and the hussars espoused our cause; and after having done our duty, we returned home, amidst the acclamations of our fellow-citizens, and to-day come to offer the homage of our services to the National Assembly."

Drouet and Guillaume were loudly applauded after this speech.

The Assembly then decreed that immediately after the arrival of Louis XVI. at the Tuileries, a guard should be given him, under the orders of La Fayette, who should be responsible for his security. Malouet was the only one who ventured to remonstrate against this captivity. "It at once destroyed inviolability and the constitution; the legislative and executive powers are now united." Alexandre Lameth opposed Malouet's motion, and declared that it was the duty of the Assembly to assume and retain, until the completion of the constitution, a dictatorship, forced upon it by the state of affairs, but that the monarchy being the form of government necessary to the concentration of the forces of so great a nation, the Assembly would immediately afterwards resume a division of powers, and return to the forms of a monarchy.

XXV.

At this moment the captive king entered Paris. It was on the 25th of June, at seven o'clock in the evening. From Meaux to the suburbs of Paris, the crowd thickened in every place as the king passed. The passions of the city, the Assembly, the press, and the clubs worked more intensely, and even closer in this population of the environs of Paris. These passions, written on every countenance, were repressed by their very violence. Indignation and contempt controlled their rage. Insult escaped them only in under tones; the populace was sinister, and not furious. Thousands of glances darted death into the windows of the carriages, but not one tongue uttered a threat.

This calmness of hatred did not escape the king; the day was burning hot. A scorching sun, reflected by the pavement and the bayonets, was almost suffocating in the berlin, where ten persons were squeezed together. Volumes of dust, raised by the trampling of two or three hundred thousand spectators, was the only veil which from time to time covered the humiliation of the king and queen from the triumph of the people. The sweat of the horses, the feverish breath of this multitude compact and excited, made the atmosphere dense and fetid. The travellers panted for breath, the foreheads of the two children were bathed in perspiration. The queen, trembling for them, let down one of the windows of the carriage quickly, and addressing the crowd in an appeal to their compassion, "See, gentlemen," she exclaimed, "in what a state my poor children are—one is choking!" "We will choke you in another fashion," replied these ferocious men in an under tone.

From time to time violent attempts of the mob broke through the line, pushed aside the horses, and men reaching the doors mounted on the steps. Merciless ruffians, looking in silence on the king, the queen, and the dauphin, seemed calculating on final crimes, and feeding on the degradation of royalty. Bodies of gendarmerie restored order from time to time. The procession resumed its way in the midst of the clashing of sabres, and the cries of men trampled under the horses' hoofs. La Fayette, who feared attempts and surprises in the streets of Paris, desired general Damas, the commandant of the escort, not to traverse the city. He placed troops in deep line on the boulevard from the barrier De l'Etoile to the Tuileries. The national guard bordered this line. The Swiss guards were also drawn up, but their flags no longer lowered before their master. No military honour was paid to the supreme head of the army. The national guards, resting on their arms, did not salute them, but saw the cortege pass by in an attitude of force, indifference, and contempt.

XXVI.

The carriages entered in the garden of the Tuileries by the turning bridge. La Fayette, on horseback at the head of his staff, had gone to meet the procession, and now headed it. During his absence an immense crowd had filled the garden, the terraces, and obstructed the gate of the chateau. The escort had the greatest difficulty in forcing its way through this tumultuous mass. They made every man keep his hat on. M. de Guillermy, a member of the Assembly, alone remained uncovered, in spite of the threats and insults which this mark of respect brought down upon him. It was then that the queen, perceiving M. de La Fayette, and fearing for her faithful body-guard sitting in the carriage, and threatened by the people, exclaimed, "Monsieur de La Fayette, save the gardes du corps."

The royal family descended from the carriage at the end of the terrace. La Fayette received them from the hands of Barnave and Petion. The children were carried in the arms of the national guard. One of the members of the left side of the Assembly, the vicomte de Noailles, approached the queen with eagerness, and offered his arm. The queen indignantly rejected it, and cast a look of contempt at the offer of protection from an enemy, then perceiving a deputy of the right, demanded his arm. So much degradation might depress, but could not overcome her. The dignity of the empire displayed itself unabated in the gesture and the heart of the woman.

The prolonged clamours of the crowd at the entrance of the king at the Tuileries announced to the Assembly its triumph. The excitement suspended the sitting for nearly half an hour. A deputy, rushing into the meeting, exclaimed that three gardes du corps were in the hands of the people, who would rend them in pieces. Twenty commissaires went out at the moment to rescue them. They entered some minutes afterwards. The riot had been appeased by them. They stated that they had seen Petion protecting with his person the door of the king's carriage. Barnave entered, mounted the tribune, covered as he was with the dust of his journey, and said, "We have fulfilled our mission to the honour of France and the Assembly; we have assured the public tranquillity and the safety of the king. The king has declared to us that he had no intention of passing the boundaries of the kingdom. (Murmurs.) We advanced rapidly as far as Meaux, in order to avoid the pursuit of M. de Bouille's troops. The national guards and the troops have done their duty. The king is at the Tuileries."

Petion added, in order to flatter public opinion, that when the carriage stopped some persons had attempted to lay hands on the gardes du corps, that he himself had been seized by the collar and dragged from his place by the carriage door, but that this movement by the people was legal in its intention, and had no other object than to enforce the execution of the law which had ordered the arrest of the accomplices of the court. It was decreed that information should be drawn up by the tribunal of the arrondissement of the Tuileries concerning the king's flight, and that three commissioners appointed by the Assembly should receive the declarations of the king and queen. "What means this obsequious exception?" exclaimed Robespierre. "Do you fear to degrade royalty by handing over the king and queen to ordinary tribunals? A citizen, a citoyenne, any man, any dignity, how elevated soever, can never be degraded by the law." Buzot supported this opinion; Duport opposed it. Respect prevailed over outrage. The commissioners named were Tronchet, Dandre, and Duport.

XXVII.

Once more in his own apartments, Louis XVI. measured with a glance the depth of his fall. La Fayette presented himself with all the demeanour of regret and respect, but with the reality of command. "Your majesty," said he to the king, "knows my attachment for your royal person, but at the same time you are not ignorant that if you separated yourself from the cause of the people, I should side with the people." "That is true," replied the king. "You follow your principles—this is a party matter, and I tell you frankly, that until lately I had believed you had surrounded me by a turbulent faction of persons of your own way of thinking in order to mislead me, but that yours was not the real opinion of France. I have learnt during my journey that I was deceived, and that this was the general wish." "Has your majesty any orders to give me?" replied La Fayette. "It seems to me," retorted the king with a smile, "that I am more at your orders than you are at mine."

The queen allowed the bitterness of her ill-restrained resentment to display itself. She wished to force on M. de La Fayette the keys of her caskets, which were in the carriages: he refused. She insisted; and when he was firm in his refusal, she placed them in his hat with her own hands. "Your majesty will have the goodness to take them back," said M. de La Fayette, "for I shall not touch them." "Well, then," answered the queen, "I shall find persons less delicate than you." The king entered his closet, wrote several letters, and gave them to a footman, who presented them to La Fayette for inspection. The general appeared indignant that he should be deemed capable of such an unworthy office as acting the spy over the king's acts; he was desirous that the thraldom of the monarch should at least preserve the outward appearance of liberty.

The service of the chateau went on as usual; but La Fayette gave the pass-word without first receiving it from the king. The iron gates of the courts and gardens were locked. The royal family submitted to La Fayette the list of persons whom they desired to receive. Sentinels were placed at every door, in every passage, in the corridors between the chambers of the king and queen. The doors of these chambers were constantly kept open—even the queen's bed was inspected. Every place, the most sacred, was suspected; female modesty was in no wise respected. The gestures, looks, and words of the king and queen all were watched, spied, and noted. They were obliged to manage by stealth some secret interviews. An officer of the guard passed twenty-four hours at a time at the end of a dark corridor, which was placed behind the apartment of the queen's,—a single lamp lighted it, like the vault of a dungeon. This post, detested by the officers on service, was sought after by the devotion of some of them; they affected zeal, in order to cloak their respect. Saint Prix, a celebrated actor of the Theatre Francais, frequently accepted this post,—he favoured the hasty interviews of the king, his wife, and sister.

In the evening one of the queen's women moved her bed between that of her mistress and the open door of the apartment, that she might thus conceal her from the eyes of the sentinels. One night the commandant of the guard, who watched between the two doors, seeing that this woman was asleep, and the queen was awake, ventured to approach the couch of his royal mistress, and gave her in a low tone some information and advice as to her situation. This conversation aroused the sleeping attendant, who, alarmed at seeing a man in uniform close to the royal bed, was about to call aloud, when the queen desired her to be silent, saying, "Do not alarm yourself; this is a good Frenchman, who is mistaken as to the intentions of the king and myself, but whose conversation betokens a sincere attachment to his masters."

Providence thus made some of their persecutors to convey some consolation to the victims. The king, so resigned, so unmoved, was bowed for a moment beneath the weight of so many troubles—so much humiliation. Such was his mental occupation, that he remained for ten days without exchanging a word with one of his family. His last struggle with misfortune seemed to have exhausted his strength. He felt himself vanquished, and desired, it would almost seem, to die by anticipation. The queen, throwing herself at his feet, and presenting to him his children, forced him to break this mournful silence. "Let us," she exclaimed, "preserve all our fortitude, in order to sustain this long struggle with fortune. If our destruction be inevitable, there is still left to us the choice of how we will perish; let us perish as sovereigns, and do not let us wait without resistance, and without vengeance, until they come and strangle us on the very floor of our own apartments!" The queen had the heart of a hero; Louis XVI. had the soul of a sage; but the genius which combines wisdom with valour was wanting to both: the one knew how to struggle—the other knew how to submit—neither knew how to reign.

XXVIII.

The effect of this flight, had it succeeded, would have wholly changed the aspect of the Revolution. Instead of having in the king, captive in Paris, an instrument and a victim, the Revolution would have had in an emancipated king, an enemy or a mediator; instead of being an anarchy, she would have had a civil war; instead of having massacres, she would have gained victories; she would have triumphed by arms, and not by executions.

Never did the fate of so many men and so many ideas depend so plainly on a chance! And yet this was not a chance. Drouet was the means of the king's destruction: if he had not recognised the monarch from his resemblance with his portrait on the assignats—if he had not rode with all speed, and reached Varennes before the carriages, in two hours more the king and his family must have been saved. Drouet, this obscure son of a post-master, sauntering and idle that evening before the door of a cottage, decided the fate of a monarchy. He took the advice of no one but himself—he set off, saying, "I will arrest the king." But Drouet would not have had this decisive impulse if, at this moment, as it were, he had not personified in himself all the agitation and all the suspicions of the people. It was the fanaticism of his country which impelled him, unknown to himself, to Varennes, and which urged him to sacrifice a whole family of fugitives to what he believed to be the safety of the nation.

He had not received instructions from anyone; he took upon himself alone the arrest and the death that ensued. His devotion to his country was cruel: his silence and commiseration would have drawn down minor calamities.

As to the king himself, this flight was in him a fault if not a crime: it was too soon or too late. Too late—for the king had already too far sanctioned the Revolution, to turn suddenly against it without appearing to betray his people and give himself the lie; too soon—for the constitution which the National Assembly was drawing up was not yet completed, the government was not yet pronounced powerless; and the foes of the king and his family were not yet so decidedly menaced that the care of his safety as a man should surpass his duties as a king. In case of success, Louis XVI. had none but foreign forces to recover his kingdom; in case of arrest, he found only a prison in his palace. On which side soever we view it, flight was fatal—it was the road to shame or to the scaffold. There is but one route by which to flee a throne and not to die—abdication. On his return from Varennes, the king should have abdicated. The Revolution would have adopted his son, and have educated it in its own image. He did not abdicate—he consented to accept the pardon of his people; he swore to execute a constitution from which he had fled. He was a king in a state of amnesty. Europe beheld in him but a fugitive from his throne led back to his punishment, the nation but a traitor, and the Revolution but a plaything.



BOOK III

I.

There is for a people, as for individuals, an instinct of conservation which warns and "gives them pause," even under the impulses of the most blind passions, before the dangers into which they are about to fling themselves headlong. They seem suddenly to recede at the aspect of this abyss, into which but now they were hastening precipitately. The intermissions of human passions are short and fugitive, but they give time to events, returns to wisdom, and opportunities to statesmen. These are moments in which they seize the hesitating and intimidated spirit of the people, in order to make them create a reaction against their own excesses, and to lead them back by the very revulsion of the passions that have already urged them too far. The day after the 25th of June, 1791, France experienced one of those throes of repentance which save a people. There was only the statesman wanting.

Never had the National Assembly presented a spectacle so imposing and so calm as during the five days which had succeeded the king's departure. It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity. It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it. It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion—called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne—regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:—in the irresponsible chief of the state. These three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public reason was her sole constitution. There was no longer a king, for he was a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law, for the constitution was incomplete: there was no longer a minister, for the executive power was suspended; and yet the kingdom was standing erect, was acting, organising, defending itself, preserving itself—and what is still more marvellous, controlled itself. It held in reserve in a palace the principal machinery of the constitution,—Royalty; and the day when the work is accomplished, it puts the king in his place, and says to him, "Be free and reign."

II.

One thing only dishonours this majestic interregnum of the nation—the temporary captivity of the king and his family. But we must remember that the nation had the right to say to its chief; "If thou wilt reign over us, thou shalt not quit the kingdom, thou shalt not convey the royalty of France amongst our enemies." And as to the forms of that captivity in the Tuileries, we must remember too that the National Assembly had not prescribed them,—that in fact it had risen with indignation at the word imprisonment,—that it had commanded a political resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution—a hostage against the republic and royalty at the same time. Maire du palais, he intimidated by the presence of a weak and degraded monarch, the discouraged royalists and the restrained republicans. Louis XVI. was his pledge.

Barnave and the Lameths had within the Assembly the attitude of La Fayette without. They required the king, in order to defend themselves from their enemies. So long as there was a man (Mirabeau) between the throne and themselves, they had played with the republic and sapped the throne in order to crush a rival. But Mirabeau dead and the throne shaken, they felt themselves weak against the very impulse they had given. They sustained, therefore, this wreck of monarchy in order to be sustained in their turn. Founders of the Jacobins, they trembled before their own handiwork:—they took refuge in the constitution which they themselves had dilapidated, and passed from the character of destructives to that of statesmen. But for the first part there is only violence needed; for the second genius is required. Barnave had talent only. He had something more, however—he had a heart, and he was a good man. The first excesses of his language were in him but the excitements of the tribune; he was desirous of tasting the popular applause, and it was showered upon him beyond his real merit. Hereafter it was not with Mirabeau he was about to measure his strength; it was with the Revolution in all its force. Jealousy took from him the pedestal which it had lent, and he was about to appear as he really was.

III.

But a sentiment more noble than that of his personal safety impelled Barnave to side with the monarchical party. His heart had passed before his ambition to the side of weakness, beauty, and misfortune. Nothing is more dangerous than for a sensitive man to know those against whom he contends. Hatred against the cause shrinks before the feeling for the persons. We become partial unwittingly. Sensibility disarms the understanding, and we soften instead of reasoning, whilst the sensitiveness of a commiserating man soon usurps the place of his opinion.

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 Petion. 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 Montmedy, 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 Bouille 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 Bouille, and strong enough to despise the threats of a proscribed man.

M. de Cazales sent in his resignation, in order to go and fight (aller combattre). The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom were Maury, Montlozier, the abbe Montesquieu, the abbe de Pradt, Virieu, &c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and destroyed, the king, under pretext of a sacred respect for royalty. They remained in the Assembly, but they annulled their power, and would only be considered as a living protest against the violation of the royal liberty and authority. The Assembly refused to hear the reading of their protest, which was itself a violation of their elective power; and they then published it and circulated it profusely all over the kingdom. "The decrees of the Assembly," they said, "have wholly absorbed the royal power. The seal of state is on the president's table; the king's sanction is annihilated. The king's name is erased from the oath which is taken from the law. The commissioners convey the orders of the committees direct to the armies. The king is a captive; a provisional republic occupies the interregnum. Far be it from us to concur in such acts; we would not even consent to be witnesses of it, if we had not still the duty of watching over the preservation of the king. Excepting this sole interest, we shall impose on ourselves the most absolute silence. This silence will be the only expression of our constant opposition to all your acts."

These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that protests abdicates. On this day there was emigration in the Assembly. This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt of politicians. Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins, Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative Assembly, it sanctioned the convention. The royalists took away the weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress carried off the head of the king and their own heads. A great opinion never lays down its arms with impunity for its country.

VI.

The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it. On seeing so large a body of the supporters of the constitutional monarchy withdraw from the contest voluntarily, they at once foresaw what they might dare, and they dared it. Their sittings became more significant in proportion as those of the Assembly grew more dull and impotent. The words of "forfeiture" and "republic" were heard there for the first time. Retracted at first, they were afterwards again pronounced: uttered at first like blasphemies, they were not long in being familiar as principles. Parties did not at first know what they themselves desired—they learnt it from success. The daring broached distempered ideas; if repulsed, the sagacious disavowed them—if caught up, the leaders resumed them. In conflicts of opinions reconnaissances are employed, as they are in the campaigns of armies. The Jacobins were the advanced guard of the Revolution, who measured the opposing obstacles of the monarchical feeling.

The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was openly demanded.

"We are free and without a king," said the Cordeliers, "as the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,—let us profit by the occasion and our right—let us swear that France is a republic."

This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited universal indignation. On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded the positive forfeiture of the throne (la decheance), and the nomination of a council of regency. "Your king," he said, "is an idiot, or a criminal. It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world, if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did not prefer the latter alternative."

On the 27th, Girey Dupre, a young writer who awaited the Gironde, mooted the judgment of Louis XVI. "We can punish a perjured king, and we ought;" such was the text of his discourse. Brissot opened the question as Petion had done at the preceding sitting, "Can a perjured king be brought to trial (juge)?

"Why," asked Brissot "should we divide ourselves into dangerous denominations? we are all of one opinion. What do they want who are here hostile to the republicans? They detest the turbulent assemblies of Athens and Rome; they fear the division of France into isolated federations. They only want the representative constitution, and they are right. What do they want who boast of the name of republicans? They fear, they abhor equally, the turbulent assemblies of Rome and Athens, and equally dread a federated republic. They desire a representative constitution—nothing more, nothing less—and thus, we all concur. The head of the executive power has betrayed his oath,—must we bring him to judgment? This is the only point on which we differ. Inviolability will else be impunity to all crimes, an encouragement for all treason—common sense demands that the punishment should follow the offence. I do not see an inviolable man governing the people, but a God and 25,000,000 of brutes! If the king had on his return entered France at the head of foreign forces, if he had ravaged our fairest provinces, and if, checked in his career, you had made him prisoner, what would you then have done with him? Would you have allowed his inviolability to have saved him? Foreign powers are held up before you as a threat; do not fear them: Europe in arms is impotent against a people who will be free."

In the National Assembly Muguer, in the name of the joint committees, brought up the report on the king's flight; he maintained the inviolability of Louis XVI. and the accusation of his accomplices. ROBESPIERRE opposed the inviolability; he avoided all show of anger in his language; and was careful to veil all his conclusions beneath the cover of mildness and humanity. "I will not pause to inquire," he said, "whether the king fled voluntarily, of his own act, or if from the extremity of the frontiers a citizen carried him off by his advice: I will not inquire either, whether this flight is a conspiracy against the public liberty. I shall speak of the king as of an imaginary sovereign, and of inviolability as a principle." After having combated the principle of inviolability by the same arguments which Girey Dupre and Brissot had applied, Robespierre thus concluded. "The measures you propose cannot but dishonour you; if you adopt them, I demand to declare myself the advocate of all the accused. I will be the defender of the three gardes du corps, the dauphine's governess, even of Monsieur de Bouille. By the principles of your committees, there is no crime; yet, invariably, where there is no crime there can be no accomplices. Gentlemen, if it be a weakness to spare a culprit, to visit the weaker culprit when the greater one escapes, is cowardice—injustice. You must pass sentence on all the guilty alike, or pronounce a general pardon."

Gregoire supported the accusation party. Salles defended the recommendation of the committee.

Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said: "The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected. I will not dilate on the advantages of monarchical government: you have proved your conviction by establishing it in your country: I will only say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. Some men, whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce, have found, in America, a people occupying a vast territory with a scanty population, nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbours, having forests for their boundaries, and having for customs the feelings of a new race, and who are wholly ignorant of those factitious passions and impulses which effect revolutions of government. They have seen a republican government established in that land, and have thence drawn the conclusion that a similar government was suitable for us. These men are the same who at this moment are contesting the inviolability of the king. But, if it be true that in our territory there is a vast population spread,—if it be true that there are amongst them a multitude of men exclusively given up to those intellectual speculations which excite ambition and the love of fame,—if it be true that around us powerful neighbours compel us to form but one compact body in order to resist them,—if it be true that all these circumstances are irresistible, and are wholly independent of ourselves, it is undeniable that the sole existing remedy lies in a monarchical government. When a country is populous and extensive, there are—and political experience proves it—but two modes of assuring to it a solid and permanent existence. Either you must organise those parts separately;—you must place in each section of the empire a portion of the government, and thus you will maintain security at the expense of unity, strength, and all the advantages which result from a great and homogeneous association:—or else you will be forced to centralise an unchangeable power, which, never renewed by the law, presenting incessantly obstacles to ambition, resists with advantage the shocks, rivalries, and rapid vibrations of an immense population, agitated by all the passions engendered by long established society. These facts decide our position. We can only be strong through a federative government, which no one here has the madness to propose, or by a monarchical government, such as you have established; that is to say, by confiding the reins of the executive power to a family having the right of hereditary succession. You have intrusted to an inviolable king the exclusive function of naming the agents of his power, but you have made those agents responsible. To be independent the king must be inviolable: do not let us set aside this axiom. We have never failed to observe this as regards individuals, let us regard it as respects the monarch. Our principles, the constitution, the law, declare that he has not forfeited (qu'il n'est pas dechu): thus, then, we have to choose between our attachment to the constitution and our resentment against an individual. Yes, I demand at this moment from him amongst you all, who may have conceived against the head of the executive power prejudices however strong, and resentment however deep; I ask at his hands whether he is more irritated against the king than he is attached to the laws of his country? I would say to those who rage so furiously against an individual who has done wrong,—I would say, Then you would be at his feet if you were content with him? (Loud and lengthened applause.) Those who would thus sacrifice the constitution to their anger against one man, seem to me too much inclined to sacrifice liberty from their enthusiasm for some other man; and since they love a republic, it is, indeed, the moment to say to them, What, would you wish a republic in such a nation? How is it you do not fear that the same variableness of the people, which to-day manifests itself by hatred, may on another day be displayed by enthusiasm in favour of some great man? Enthusiasm even more dangerous than hatred: for the French nation, you know, understands better how to love than to hate. I neither fear the attacks of foreign nations nor of emigrants: I have already said so; but I now repeat it with the more truth, as I fear the continuation of uneasiness and agitation, which will not cease to exist and affect us until the Revolution be wholly and pacifically concluded. We need fear no mischief from without; but vast injury is done to us from within, when we are disturbed by painful ideas—when chimerical dangers, excited around us, create with the people some consistency and some credit for the men who use them as a means of unceasing agitation. Immense damage is done to us when that revolutionary impetus, which has destroyed every thing there was to destroy, and which has urged us to the point where we must at last pause, is perpetuated. If the Revolution advance one step further it cannot do so without danger. In the line of liberty, the first act which can follow is the annihilation of royalty; in the line of equality, the first act which must follow is an attempt on all property. Revolutions are not effected with metaphysical maxims—there must be an actual tangible prey to offer to the multitude that is led astray. It is time, therefore, to end the Revolution. It ought to stop at the moment when the nation is free, and when all Frenchmen are equal. If it continue in trouble, it is dishonoured, and we with it; yes, all the world ought to agree that the common interest is involved in the close of the Revolution. Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible to make it retrograde. Those who fashioned it must see that it is at its consummation. Kings themselves—if from, time to time profound truths can penetrate to the councils of kings—if occasionally the prejudices which surround them will permit the sound views of a great and philosophical policy to reach them—kings themselves must learn that there is for them a wide difference between the example of a great reform in the government and that of the abolition of royalty: that if we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! but be their conduct what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us. Regenerators of the empire! follow straightly your undeviating line; you have been courageous and potent—be to-day wise and moderate. In this will consist the glorious termination of your efforts. Then, again returning to your domestic hearths, you will obtain from all, if not blessings, at least the silence of calumny." This address, the most eloquent ever delivered by Barnave, carried the report in the affirmative; and for several days checked all attempts at republic and forfeiture in the clubs of the Cordeliers and Jacobins. The king's inviolability was consecrated in fact as well as in principle. M. de Bouille, his accomplices and adherents, were sent for trial to the high national court of Orleans.

VII.

Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually progressing. Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man, orator, or statesman to contain. Its breath was too powerful for any one breast to respire it solely. Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound. Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it. It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims.

Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to advance. These two levers were the press and the clubs. The clubs and the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined air. Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted itself in the circle of the established government, the air of journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement. The stagnation within was fully credited, but the current was without.

The press, in the half century which had preceded the Revolution, had been the echo, well organised and calm, of the thoughts of sages and reformers. From the time when the Revolution burst forth, it had become the turbulent and frequently cynical echo of the popular excitement.

It had itself transformed the modes of communicating ideas; it no longer produced books—it had not the time: at first it expended itself in pamphlets, and subsequently in a multitude of flying and diurnal sheets, which, published at a low price amongst the people, or gratuitously placarded in the public thoroughfares, incited the multitude to read and discuss them. The treasury of the national thought, whose pieces of gold were too pure, or too bulky, for the use of the populace, it was, if we may be allowed the expression, converted into a multitude of smaller coins, struck with the impress of the passions of the hour, and often tarnished with the foulest oxides. Journalism, like an irresistible element of the life of a people in revolution, had made its own place, without listening to the law which had been made to restrain it.

Mirabeau, who required that his speeches should echo throughout the departments, had given birth to this speaking trumpet of the Revolution, (despite the orders in council) in his Letters to my Constituents, and in the Courrier de Provence. At the opening of the States General, and at the taking of the Bastille, other journals had appeared. At each new insurrection there was a fresh inundation of newspapers. The leading organs of public agitation were then the Revolution of Paris, edited by Loustalot; a weekly paper, with a circulation of 200,000 copies; the feeling of the man may be seen in the motto of his paper: "The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees—let us rise!" The Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, subsequently called the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, was the production of Camille Desmoulins. This young student, who became suddenly a political character on a chair in the garden of the Palais Royal, on the first outbreak of the month of July, 1789, preserved in his style, which was frequently very brilliant, something of his early character. It was the sarcastic genius of Voltaire descended from the saloon to the pavement. No man in himself ever personified the people better than did Camille Desmoulins. He was the mob with his turbulent and unexpected movements, his variableness, his unconnectedness, his rages interrupted by laughter, or suddenly sinking into sympathy and sorrow for the very victims he immolated. A man, at the same time so ardent and so trifling, so trivial and so inspired, so indecisive between blood and tears, so ready to crush what he had just deified with enthusiasm, must have the more empire over a people in revolt, in proportion as he resembled them. His character was his nature. He not only aped the people, he was the people himself. His newspapers cried in the public streets, and their sarcasm, bandied from mouth to mouth, has not been swept away with the other impurities of the day. He remains, and will remain, a Menippus, the satirist stained with blood. It was the popular chorus which led the people to their most important movements, and which was frequently stifled by the whistling of the cord of the street lamp, or in the hatchet-stroke of the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins was the remorseless offspring of the Revolution,—Marat was its fury; he had the clumsy tumblings of the brute in his thought, and its gnashing of teeth in his style. His journal (L'Ami du Peuple), the People's Friend, smelt of blood in every line.

VIII.

Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a savant without reputation, with a desire for fame without having received from society or nature the means of acquiring either, he revenged himself on all that was great not only in society but in nature. Genius was as hateful to him as aristocracy. Wherever he saw any thing elevated or striking he hunted it down as though it were a deadly enemy. He would have levelled creation. Equality was his mania, because superiority was his martyrdom; he loved the Revolution because it brought down all to his level; he loved it even to blood, because blood washed out the stain of his long-during obscurity; he made himself a public denouncer by the popular title; he knew that denouncement is flattery to all who tremble, and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism, inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity, and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence, and there he took refuge safe from poignard and poison. His journal affected the imagination like something supernatural. Marat was wrapped in real fanaticism. The confidence reposed in him nearly amounted to worship. The fumes of the blood he incessantly demanded had mounted to his brain. He was the delirium of the Revolution, himself a living delirium!

IX.

Brissot, as yet obscure, wrote Le Patriote Francais. A politician, and aspiring to leading parts, he only excited revolutionary passions in proportion as he hoped one day to govern by them. At first a constitutionalist and friend of Necker and Mirabeau, a hireling before he became a doctrinaire, he saw in the people only a sovereign more suitable to his own ambition. The republic was his rising sun; he approached it as to his own fortune, but with prudence, and frequently looking behind him to see if opinion followed his traces.

Condorcet, an aristocrat by genius, although an aristocrat by birth, became a democrat from philosophy. His passion was the transformation of human reason. He wrote La Chronique de Paris.

Carra, an obscure demagogue, had created for himself a name of fear in the Annales Patriotiques. Freron, in the Orateur du Peuple, rivalled Marat. Fauchet, in the Bouche de Fer, elevated democracy to a level with religious philosophy. The "last not least," Laclos, an officer of artillery, author of an obscene novel, and the confidant of the Duc d'Orleans, edited the Journal des Jacobins, and stirred up through France the flame of ideas and words of which the focus was in the clubs.

All these men used their utmost efforts to impel the people beyond the limits which Barnave had prescribed to the event of the 21st June. They desired to avail themselves of the instant when the throne was left empty to obliterate it from the constitution. They overwhelmed the king with insults and objurgations, in order that the Assembly might not dare to replace at the head of their institutions a prince whom they had vilified. They clamoured for interrogatory, sentence, forfeiture, abdication, imprisonment, and hoped to degrade royalty for ever by degrading the king. The republic saw its hour for the first moment, and trembled to allow it to escape. All these hands at once urged men's minds towards a decisive movement. Articles in the journals provoked motions, motions petitions, and petitions riots. The altar of the country in the Champ-de-Mars, which remained erected for a new federation, was the place which was already pointed out for the assemblies of the people. It was the Mons Aventinus, whither it was to retire, and whence it was to dictate to a timid and corrupt senate.

"No more king,—let us be republicans," wrote Brissot in the Patriote. "Such is the cry at the Palais Royal, and it does not gain ground fast enough; it would seem as though it were blasphemy. This repugnance for assuming the name of the condition in which the state actually is is very extraordinary in the eyes of philosophy." "No king! no protector! no regent! Let us have done with man-eaters of every sort and kind," re-echoed the Bouche de Fer. "Let the eighty-three departments enter into a federation, and declare that they will no longer endure tyrants, monarchs, or protectors. Their shade is as fatal to the people as that of the Bohonupas is deadly to all that lives. If we nominate a regent we shall soon fight for the choice of a master. Let us only contend for liberty."

Provoked by this reference to the regency, which appeared to point to him, the Duc d'Orleans wrote to the journals that he was ready to serve his country by land or by sea; but in respect to any question of regency, he from that moment renounced, and for ever, any pretensions to that title which the constitution might give him. "After having made so many sacrifices to the cause of the people," he said, "I am no longer in a condition to quit my position as a simple citizen. Ambition in me would be an inexcusable inconsistency."

Already discredited by all parties, this prince, henceforth incapable of serving the throne, was equally incapable of serving the republic. Odious to the royalists, put aside by the demagogues, suspected by the constitutionalists, there only remained to him the stoical attitude in which he took refuge. He had abdicated his rank, abdicated his own faction; he had abdicated the favour of the people. His life was all that remained to him.

At the same moment Camille Desmoulins was thus satirically apostrophising La Fayette, the first idol of the Revolution:—"Liberator of two worlds, flower of Janissaries, phoenix of Alguazils-major, Don Quixotte of Capet and the two chambers, constellation of the white horse[2], my voice is too weak to raise itself above the clamour of your thirty thousand spies, and as many more your satellites, above the noise of your four hundred drums, and your cannons loaded with grape. I had until now misrepresented your—more than—royal highness through the allusions of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport. It was after them that I denounced you to the eighty-three departments as an ambitious man who only cared for parade, a slave of the court similar to those marshals of the league to whom revolt had given the baton, and who, looking upon themselves as bastards, were desirous of becoming legitimate; but all of a sudden you embrace each other, and proclaim yourselves mutually fathers of your country! You say to the nation, 'Confide in us; we are the Cincinnati, the Washingtons, the Aristides.' Which of these two testimonies are we to believe? Foolish people! The Parisians are like those Athenians to whom Demosthenes said, 'Shall you always resemble those athletes who struck in one place cover it with their hand,—struck in another place they place their hand there, and thus always occupied with the blows they receive, do not know either how to strike or defend themselves!' They are beginning to doubt whether Louis XVI. could be perjured since he is at Varennes. I think I see the same great eyes open when they shall see La Fayette open the gates of the capital to despotism and aristocracy. May I be deceived in my conjectures, for I am going from Paris, as Camillus my patron departed from an ungrateful country, wishing it every kind of prosperity. I have no occasion to have been an emperor like Diocletian to know that the fine lettuces of Salernum, which are far superior to the empire of the East, are quite equal to the gay scarf which a municipal authority wears, and the uneasiness with which a Jacobin journalist returns to his home in the evening, fearing always lest he should fall into an ambuscade of the cut-throats of the general. For me it was not to establish two chambers that I first mounted the tricolour cockade!"