History of the Girondists Part 28

He soon comprehended that a revolution in ideas must undermine inst.i.tutions, unless inst.i.tutions modelled themselves on the new ideas.

He gave himself to the const.i.tution without enthusiasm; he desired the maintenance of the throne, had no faith in a republic, foresaw a change in the dynasty; and was even accused of meditating it. The emigration, by decimating the upper ranks of the army, left s.p.a.ce for him, and he was named general, by length of service. He preserved a firm and well-devised conduct, equi-distant from the throne and the people, from the counter-revolutionist and the malcontent, ready to go with the opinion of the court or of the nation, according as events might transpire. By turns he was in communication with all parties, as if to sound the growing power of Mirabeau and de Montmorin, the Duc d'Orleans and the Jacobins, La Fayette and the Girondists. In his various commands during these days of crises, he maintained discipline by his popularity, was on terms with the insurgent people, and placed himself at their head, in order to restrain them. The people believed him certainly on their side; the soldiery adored him; he detested anarchy, but flattered the demagogues. He applied very skilfully to his popularity those able tactics which Favier had taught him. He viewed the Revolution as an heroic intrigue. He manoeuvred his patriotism as he would have manoeuvred his battalions on the field of battle. He considered the coming war with much delight, knowing already all of a hero's part. He foresaw that the Revolution, deserted by the n.o.bility, and a.s.sailed by all Europe, would require a general ready formed to direct the undisciplined efforts of the ma.s.ses it had excited. He prepared himself for that post. The long subordination of his genius fatigued him. At fifty-six years of age he had the fire of youth with all the coolness of age; his earnest desire was advancement; the yearning of his soul for fame was the more intense in proportion to the years he had already unavailingly pa.s.sed. His frame, fortified by climates and voyages, lent itself, like a pa.s.sive instrument, to his activity: all was young in him except his amount of years; they were expended, but not by energy. He had the youth of Caesar, an impatient desire for fortune, and the certainty of acquiring it. With great men, to live is to rise in renown; he had not lived, because his reputation was not equivalent to his ambition.

VII.

Dumouriez was of that middle stature of the French soldier who wears his uniform gracefully, his havresac lightly, and his musket and sabre as if he did not feel their weight. Equally agile and compact, his body had the cast of those statues of warriors who repose on their expanded muscles, and yet seem ready to advance. His att.i.tude was confident and proud; all his motions were as rapid as his mind. He vaulted into the saddle without touching the stirrup, holding the mane by his left hand.

He sprung to the ground with one effort, and handled the bayonet of the soldier as vigorously as the sword of the general. His head, rather thrown backwards, rose well from his shoulders, and turned on his neck with ease and grace, like all elegant men. These haughty motions of his head made him look taller under the tricoloured c.o.c.kade. His brow was lofty, well-turned, flat at the temples, and well displayed; his muscles set in play by his reflection and resolution. The salient and well-defined angles announced sensibility of mind beneath delicacy of understanding and the most exquisite tact. His eyes were black, large, and full of fire; his long lids, beginning to turn grey, increased their brilliancy, though sometimes they were very soft; his nose, and the oval of his countenance, were of that aquiline type which reveals races enn.o.bled by war and empire; his mouth, flexible and handsome, was almost always smiling; no tension of the lips betrayed the effort of this plastic mind--this master mind, which played with difficulties, overcame obstacles; his chin, turned and decided, bore his face, as it were, on a firm and square base, whilst the habitual expression of his countenance was calm and expansive cheerfulness. It was evident that no pressure of affairs was too heavy for him, and that he constantly preserved so much liberty of mind as enabled him to jest alike with good or bad fortune.

He treated politics, war, and government with gaiety. The tone of his voice was sonorous, manly, and vibrating; and was distinctly heard above the noise of the drum, and the clash of the bayonet. His oratory was straightforward, clever, striking; his words were effective in council, in confidence, and intimacy: they soothed and insinuated themselves like those of a woman. He was persuasive, for his soul, mobile and sensitive, had always in its accent the truth and impression of the moment. Devoted to the s.e.x, and easily enamoured, his experience with them had imbued him with one of their highest qualities--pity. He could not resist tears, and those of the queen would have made him a Seid of the throne; there was no position or opinion he would not have sacrificed to a generous impulse; his greatness of soul was not calculation, it was excessive feeling. He had no political principles; the Revolution was to him nothing more than a fine drama, which was to furnish a grand scene for his abilities, and a part for his genius. A great man for the service of events, if the Revolution had not beheld him as its general and preserver, he would equally have been the general and preserver of the Coalition. Dumouriez was not the hero of a principle, but of the occasion.

VIII.

The new ministers met at Madame Roland's, the soul of the Girondist ministry: Duranton, Lacoste, Cahier-Gerville received there, in all pa.s.siveness, their instructions from the men whose shadows only they were in the council. Dumouriez affected, like them, at first, a full compliance with the interests and will of the party, which, personified at Roland's by a young, lovely, and eloquent woman, must have had an additional attraction for the general. He hoped to rule by ruling the heart of this female. He employed with her all the plasticity of his character, all the graces of his nature, all the fascinations of his genius; but Madame Roland had a preservative against the warrior's seductions that Dumouriez had not been accustomed to find in the women he had loved--austere virtue and a strong will. There was but one means of captivating her admiration, and that was by surpa.s.sing her in patriotic devotion. These two characters could not meet without contrasting themselves, nor understand without despising each other.

Very soon, therefore, Dumouriez considered Madame Roland as a stubborn bigot, and she estimated Dumouriez as a frivolous presuming man, finding in his look, smile, and tone of voice that audacity of success towards her s.e.x which betrayed, according to her estimation, the free conduct of the females amongst whom he had lived, and which offended her decorum.

There was more of the courtier than the patriot in Dumouriez. This French aristocracy of manners displeased the engraver's humble daughter; perhaps it reminded her of her lowly condition, and the humiliations of her childhood at Versailles. Her ideal was not the military, but the citizen; a republican mind alone could acquire her love. Besides, she saw at a glance that this man was too great to remain long on the level of her party; she suspected his genius in his politeness, and his ambition beneath his familiarity. "Have an eye to that man," she said to her husband after their first interview; "he may conceal a master beneath the colleague, and drive from the cabinet those who introduced him there."

IX.

Roland, too happy at being in power, did not foresee his disgrace, and encouraging his wife, trusted more and more to the admiration which Dumouriez feigned for him. He thought himself the statesman of the cabinet, and his gratified vanity lent itself credulously to the advances of Dumouriez, and even made him better disposed towards the king. On his entry to the ministry Roland had affected in his costume the bluntness of his principles, and in his manners the rudeness of his republicanism. He presented himself at the Tuileries in a black coat, with a round hat, and nailed shoes covered with dust. He wished to show in himself the man of the people, entering the palace in the plain garb of the citizen, and thus meeting the man of the throne. This tacit insolence he thought would flatter the nation and humiliate the king.

The courtiers were indignant; the king groaned over it; Dumouriez laughed at it. "Ah, well then, really, gentlemen," he said to the courtiers, "since there is no more etiquette there is no more monarchy."

This jocose mode of treating the thing had at once removed all the anger of the court, and all the effect of the Spartan pretensions of Roland.

The king no longer regarded the discourtesy, and treated Roland with that cordiality which unlocks men's hearts. The new ministers were astonished to feel themselves confiding and moved in the presence of the monarch. Having arrived suspicious and republican to their seats in the cabinet, they quitted it almost royalists.

"The king is not known," said Roland to his wife: "a weak prince, he is one of the best of men; he does not want good intentions, but good advice: he does not like the aristocracy, and has strong affection for the people: perhaps he was born to serve as the medium between republic and monarchy. By rendering the const.i.tution easy to him we shall make him like it, and the popularity he will re-acquire by following our counsels will render government easy to ourselves. His nature is so great that the throne has been unable to corrupt it, and he is equally remote from the silly brute which has been held up to the laughter of the people as from the sensitive and highly accomplished man his courtiers pretend to adore in him; his mind, without being superior, is expansive and reflecting; in a humble position his abilities would have provided for him; he has a general and occasionally sound knowledge, knows the details of business, and acts towards men with that simple but persuasive ability which gives kings the precocious necessity of governing their impressions; his prodigious memory always recalls to him at the right time things, names, and faces; he likes work, and reads every thing; he is never idle for a moment; a tender parent, a model of a husband: chaste in feeling, he has done away with all those scandals which disgraced the courts of his predecessors; he loves none but the queen, and his condescension, which is occasionally injurious to his politics, is at least a weakness 'which leans to virtue's side.' Had he been born two centuries earlier his peaceable reign would have been counted amongst the number of happy years of the monarchy. Circ.u.mstances appear to have influenced his mind. The Revolution has convinced him of its necessity, and we must convince him of its possibility. In our hands the king may better serve it than any other citizen in the kingdom; by enlightening this prince we may be faithful alike to his interests and those of the nation--the king and Revolution must be with us as one."

X.

Thus said Roland in the first dazzling of power; his wife listened with a smile of incredulity on her lips. Her keener glance had at the instant measured a career more vast and a termination more decisive than the timid and transitory compromise between a degraded royalty and an imperfect revolution. It would have cost her too much to renounce the ideal of her ardent soul; all her wishes tended to a republic; all her exertions, all her words, all her aspirations, were destined, unconsciously to herself, to urge thither her husband and his a.s.sociates.

"Mistrust every man's perfidy, and more especially your own virtue," was her reply to the weak and vain Roland. "You see in this world but courts, where all is unreal, and where the most polished surfaces conceal the most sinister combinations. You are only an honest countryman wandering amongst a crowd of courtiers,--virtue in danger amidst a myriad of vices: they speak our language, and we do not know theirs. Would it be possible that they should not deceive us? Louis XVI., of a degenerate race, without elevation of mind, or energy of will, allowed himself to be enthralled early in life by religious prejudices, which have even lessened his intellect; fascinated by a giddy queen, who unites to Austrian insolence the enchantment of beauty and the highest rank, and who makes of her secret and corrupt court the sanctuary of her pleasures and the focus of her vices, this prince, blinded on the one hand by the priests, and on the other by love, holds at random the loose reins of an empire which is escaping from his grasp.

France, exhausted of men, does not give to him, either in Maurepas, Necker, or Calonne, a minister capable of supporting him. The aristocracy is barren, and produces nothing but to its shame; the government must be renewed in the holier and deeper fount of the nation; the time for a democracy is here,--why delay it! You are its men, its virtues, its characters, its intelligence. The Revolution is behind you, it hails you, urges you onward, and would you surrender it to the first smile from the king because he has the condescension of a man of the people? No: Louis XVI., half dethroned by the nation, cannot love the nation that fetters him; he may feign to caress his chains, but all his thoughts are devoted to the idea of how he can spurn them. His only resource at this moment is to protest his attachment to the Revolution, and to lull the ministers whom the Revolution empowers to watch over his intrigues. But this pretence is the last and most dangerous of the conspiracies of the throne. The const.i.tution is the forfeiture of Louis XVI., and the patriot ministers are his superintendents. Fallen greatness cannot love the cause of its decadence; no man likes his humiliation. Trust in human nature, Roland--that alone never deceives, and mistrust courts. Your virtue is too elevated to see the snares which courtiers spread beneath your feet."

XI.

Such language amazed Roland. Brissot, Condorcet, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Guadet, and especially Buzot, the friend and most intimate confidant of Madame Roland, strengthened at their evening meetings the mistrust of the minister. He armed himself with fresh distrust from their conversations, and entered the council with a more frowning brow and more resolute determination: the king's frankness disarmed him--Dumouriez discouraged him by his gaiety--power softened him by its influence. He wavered between the two great difficulties of the moment, the double sanction required from the king for the decrees which were most repugnant to his heart and conscience, the decree against the emigrants, and the decree against the nonjuring priests; and he wavered as to war.

During this tergiversation of Roland and his colleagues, Dumouriez acquired the favour of the king and the people, the secret of his conduct being comprised in what he had said a short time before to M. de Montmorin, in a secret conversation he had with that minister. "If I were king of France, I would disconcert all parties by placing myself at the head of the Revolution."

This sentence contained the sole line of policy capable of saving Louis XVI. In a time of revolution every king who is not revolutionary must be inevitably crushed between the two parties: a neutral king no longer reigns--a pardoned king degrades the throne--a king conquered by his own people has for refuge only exile or the scaffold. Dumouriez felt that his first step was to convince the king of his personal attachment, and take him into his confidence, or indeed make him his accomplice in the patriotic part he proposed to play; const.i.tute himself the secret mediator between the will of the monarch and the exactions of the cabinet, to control the king by his influence over the Girondists, and the Girondists by his influence over the king; the part of the favourite of misfortune and protector of a persecuted queen pleased alike his ambition and his heart. A soldier, diplomatist, gentleman, there was in his soul a wholly different feeling for degraded royalty than the sentiment of satisfied jealousy which filled the minds of the Girondists. The _prestige_ of the throne existed for Dumouriez; the _prestige_ of liberty only existed for the Girondists. This feeling, revealed in his att.i.tude, language, gestures, could not long escape the observation of Louis XVI. Kings have twofold tact, misfortune makes them more nice; the unfortunate perceive pity in a look; it is the only homage they are allowed to receive, and they are the more jealous of it.

In a secret conversation the king and Dumouriez came to an understanding.

XII.

Dumouriez's restless conduct in his commands in Normandy, the friends.h.i.+p of Gensonne, the favour of the Jacobins for him, had prejudiced Louis XVI. against his new minister. The minister, on his side, expected to find in the king a spirit opposed to the const.i.tution, a mind trammelled by routine, a violent temper, an abrupt manner, and using language imperious and offensive to all who approached him. Such was the caricature of this unfortunate prince. It was necessary to disfigure him in order to make the nation hate him.

Dumouriez found in him at this moment, and during the three months of his ministry, an upright mind, a heart open to every benevolent sentiment, unvarying politeness, endurance and patience which defied the calamities of his situation. Extreme timidity, the result of the long seclusion in which his youth had been pa.s.sed, repressed the feelings of his heart, and gave to his language and his intercourse with men a stiffness and embarra.s.sment which destroyed his better qualities of decided and calm courage; he frequently spoke to Dumouriez of his death as an event probable and doomed, the prospect of which did not affect his serenity nor preclude him from doing his duty to the last as a father and a king.

"Sire," said Dumouriez to him, with the chivalric sympathy which compa.s.sion adds to respect, and with that aspect in which the heart says more than language; "you have overcome your prejudices against myself; you have commanded me by M. de Laporte to accept the post he had refused." "Yes," replied the king. "Well, I come now to devote myself wholly to your service, to your protection. But the part of a minister is no longer what it was in former days: without ceasing to be the servant of the king, I am the man of the nation. I will speak to you always in the language of liberty and the const.i.tution. Allow me then, in order to serve you better, that in public and in the council I appear in my character as a const.i.tutionalist, and that I avoid every thing that may at all reveal my personal attachment towards you. In this respect I must break through all etiquette, and avoid attending the court. In the council, I shall oppose your views, and shall propose as our representatives in foreign courts men devoted to the nation. When your repugnance to my choice shall be invincible and on good grounds, I shall comply; if this repugnance shall tend to compromise the safety of the country and yourself, I shall beg you to allow me to resign, and nominate my successor. Think of the terrible dangers which beset your throne--it must be consolidated by the confidence of the nation in your sincere attachment to the Revolution. It is a conquest which it depends on you to make. I have prepared four despatches to amba.s.sadors in this sense. In these I have used language to which they are unused from courts, the language of an offended and resolute nation. I shall read them this morning before the council: if you approve my labour, I shall continue to speak thus, and act in accordance with my language; if not, my carriage is ready, and, unable to serve you in the council, I shall depart whither my tastes and studies for thirty years call me, to serve my country in the field."

The king, astonished and much moved, said to him, "I like your frankness; I know you are attached to me, and I antic.i.p.ate all from your services. They had created many prejudices against you, but this moment effaces them all. Go and do as your heart directs you, and according to the best interests of the nation, which are also mine." Dumouriez retired; but he knew that the queen, adored by her husband, clung to the policy of her husband with all the pa.s.sion and excitement of her soul.

He desired and feared at the same time an interview with this princess: one word from her would accomplish or destroy the bold enterprise he had dared to meditate, of reconciling the king with the people.

XIII.

The queen sent for the general into her most private apartments.

Dumouriez found her alone, her cheeks flushed by the emotion of an internal struggle, and walking rapidly up and down the room, like a person whose agitated thoughts require corresponding activity of body.

Dumouriez placed himself in silence near the fireplace, in the att.i.tude of respect and sorrow, inspired by the presence of so august, so beautiful, and so miserable a princess. She advanced towards him with a mingled air of majesty and anger.

"Monsieur," said she, with that accent that reveals at once resentment against fortune, and contempt for fate; "you are all-powerful at this moment; but it is through popular favour, and that soon destroys its idols." She did not await his reply, but continued, "Your existence depends upon your conduct; it is said that you possess great talents, and you must imagine that neither the king nor myself can suffer all these innovations of the const.i.tution. I tell you thus much frankly, so make your decision." "Madame," returned Dumouriez, "I am confounded by the dangerous disclosure your Majesty has thought fit to make me; I will not betray your confidence, but I am placed between the king and the nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me," continued Dumouriez, with respectful earnestness, "to represent to you that the safety of the king--your own--and that of your children, and the very re-establishment of the royal authority--is bound up with the const.i.tution. You are surrounded by enemies, who sacrifice you to their own interests. The const.i.tution alone can, by strengthening itself, protect you and a.s.sure the happiness and glory of the king." "It cannot last long, beware of yourself," returned the queen, with a look of anger and menace.

Dumouriez imagined that he saw in this look and speech an allusion to personal danger and an insinuation of alarm. "I am more than fifty years old, madame," replied he, in a low tone, in which the firmness of the soldier was mingled with the pity of the man; "I have braved many perils in my life; and when I accepted the ministry, I well knew that my responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers." "Ah," cried the queen, with a gesture of horror, "this calumny and disgrace was alone wanting! You appear to believe me capable of causing you to be a.s.sa.s.sinated." Tears of indignation checked her utterance. Dumouriez, equally moved with herself, disclaimed the injurious interpretation given to his reply. "Far be it from me, madame, to offer you so cruel an insult; your soul is great and n.o.ble, and the heroism you have displayed in so many circ.u.mstances, has for ever attached me to you." She was appeased in a moment, and laid her hand on Dumouriez's arm, in token of reconciliation.

The minister profited by this return to serenity and confidence to give Marie Antoinette advice, of which the emotion of his features and voice sufficiently attested the sincerity. "Trust me, madame, I have no motive for deceiving you; I abhor anarchy and its crimes equally with yourself.

But I have experience; I live in the centre of the different parties, and I take part in opinion. I am connected with the people, and I am better placed than your majesty for judging the extent and the direction of events. This is not, as you deem it, a popular movement; but the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against an old and decaying order of things. Mighty factions feed the flame, and in every one of them are scoundrels or madmen. I alone see in the Revolution the king and the nation, and that which tends to separate them, ruins them both. I seek to unite them, and it is for you to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in them, tell me instantly, and I will retire, and mourn in obscurity the fate of my country and your own." The queen was touched and convinced; the frankness of Dumouriez at once pleased and won her. The heart of the soldier was a guarantee to her of the conduct of the statesman. Firm, brave, and heroic, she preferred to have the weight of his sword in the councils of his king, rather than those politicians, and specious orators, who, nevertheless, bent before every blast of opinion or sedition; and an intimate understanding soon existed between the queen and the general.

The queen was for some time faithful to her promises, but the repeated outrages of the people again moved her, in spite of herself, to anger and conspiracy. "See," said she to the king before Dumouriez, one day, pointing to the tops of the trees in the Tuileries; "a prisoner in this palace, I do not venture to show myself at the windows that look on to the garden. The crowd collected there, and who watch even my tears, hoot me. Yesterday, to breathe the air, I showed myself at a window that looks at the court; an artillery-man on guard addressed the most revolting language to me. 'How I should like,' added he, 'to see your head on the point of my bayonet!' In this frightful garden I see on one side a man mounted on a chair, and vociferating the most odious insults against us, whilst he threatens, by his gestures, the inhabitants of the palace; on the other, the populace is dragging to the basin some priest or soldier, whom they overwhelm with blows and outrages, whilst, at the same time, and close to these terrible scenes, persons are playing at ball or walking about in the _allees_. What a residence--what a life--what a people!" Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient. But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner. How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see in this indifferent and cruel nation a people worthy of empire and of liberty?

XIV.

When all his measures with the court were concerted, Dumouriez no longer hesitated to leap over the s.p.a.ce that divided the king and the extreme party, and to give the government the form of pure patriotism. He made overtures to the Jacobins, and boldly presented himself at their sitting the next day. The chamber was thronged, and the apparition of Dumouriez struck the tribunes with mute astonishment. His martial figure and the impetuosity of his conduct won for him at once the favour of the a.s.sembly; for no one suspected that so much audacity concealed so much stratagem, and they saw in him only the minister who threw himself into the arms of the people, and every one hastened to receive him.

It was the moment when the _bonnet rouge_, the symbol of extreme opinion, a species of livery worn by the demagogues and flatterers of the people, had been almost unanimously adopted by the Jacobins. This emblem, like many similar ones received by the revolutions from the hand of chance, was a mystery even to those who wore it. It had been adopted for the first time on the day of the triumph of the soldiers of Chateauvieux. Some said it was the _coiffure_ of the galley-slaves, once infamous, but glorious since it had covered the brows of these martyrs of the insurrection; and they added that the people wished to purify this head-dress from every stain by wearing it themselves. Others only saw in it the Phrygian bonnet, a symbol of freedom for slaves.

The _bonnet rouge_ had from its first appearance been the subject of dispute and dissension amongst the Jacobins; the _exaltes_ wore it, whilst the _moderes_ yet abstained from adopting it. Dumouriez did not hesitate, but mounted the tribune, placed this sign of patriotism on his head, and at once a.s.sumed the emblem of the most prominent party, whilst this mute yet significant eloquence awakened a burst of enthusiasm on every side of the _Salle_. "Brothers and friends," said Dumouriez, "every instant of my life shall be devoted to carrying out the wishes of the people, and to justifying the king's choice. I will employ in all negotiations the force of a free people, and before long these negotiations will produce a lasting peace or a decisive war. (Applause.) If we have this war I will abandon my political post, and I will a.s.sume my rank in the army to triumph, or perish a free man with my brethren. A heavy weight presses on me, aid me to bear it; I require your counsels, transmit them to me through your journals. Tell me truth, even the most unpalatable; but repel calumny, and do not repulse a citizen whom you know to be sincere and intrepid, and who devotes himself to the cause of the Revolution and the nation."

The president replied to the minister that the society gloried in counting him amongst its brethren. These words occasioned some murmurs, which were stifled by the acclamations that followed Dumouriez to his place. It was proposed that the two speeches should be printed. Legendre opposed the motion from economical motives, but was hissed by the tribunes. "Why these unusual honours, and this reply of the president to the minister?" said Collot d'Herbois. "If he comes here as a minister, there is no reply to make him. If he comes here as an a.s.sociate and a brother, he does no more than his duty; he only raises himself to the level of our opinions. There is but one answer to be made,--let him act as he has spoken." Dumouriez raised his hand, and gesticulated to Collot d'Herbois.

Robespierre rose, smiled sternly on Dumouriez, and said, "I am not one of those who believe it is utterly impossible for a minister to be a patriot, and I accept with pleasure the promises that M. Dumouriez has just given us. When he shall have verified these promises, when he has dissipated the foes armed against us by his predecessors, and by the conspirators who even now hold the reins of government, spite of the expulsion of several ministers, then, and then only, I shall be inclined to bestow on him the praises he will have merited, and I shall even in that case deem that every good citizen in this a.s.sembly is his equal.

The people only is great, is worthy in my eyes; the toys of ministerial power fade into insignificance before it. It is out of respect for people, for the minister himself, that I demand that his presence here be not marked by any of those homages that mark the decay of public feeling. He asks us to counsel the ministers; I promise him, on my part, to give him advice which will be useful to them and to the country at large. So long as M. Dumouriez shall prove by acts of pure patriotism, and by real services to his country, that he is the brother of all good citizens, and the defender of the people, he shall find none but supporters here. I do not dread the presence of any minister in this society, but I declare that the instant a minister possesses more ascendency here than a citizen, I will demand his ostracism. But this will never happen."

Robespierre left the tribune, and Dumouriez cast himself into his arms; the a.s.sembly rose, and sealed by its applause their fraternal embrace, in which all saw the augury of the union of power and the people. The president Doppet read (the _bonnet rouge_ on his head) a letter from Petion to the society, on the subject of this new head-dress adopted by the patriots, and on which Petion spoke against this superfluous mark of _civisme_.

"This sign," said he, "instead of increasing your popularity, alarms the public mind, and affords a pretext for calumnies against you. The moment is serious, the demonstrations of patriotism should be serious as the times. It is the enemies of the Revolution who urge it to these frivolities in order that they may have the right to accuse it of frivolity and thoughtlessness. They thus give patriotism the appearance of faction, and these emblems divide those they should rally. However great the vogue that counsels them to-day, they will never be universally adopted, for every man really devoted to the public welfare will be quite indifferent to a _bonnet rouge_. Liberty will neither be more majestic nor more glorious in this garb, but the very signs with which you adorn her will serve as a pretext for dissension amongst her children. A civil war, commencing in sarcasm and ending in bloodshed, may be caused by a ridiculous manifestation. I leave you to meditate on these ideas."

XV.

Whilst this letter was being read, the president, a timorous man, who perceived the agency of Robespierre in the advice of Petion, had quietly removed from his head the repudiated _bonnet rouge_, and the members of the society, one after another, followed his example. Robespierre alone, who had never adopted this bauble of the fas.h.i.+on, and with whom Petion had concerted his letter, mounted the tribune, and said, "I, in common with the major of Paris, respect every thing that bears the image of liberty; but we have a sign which recalls to us constantly our oath to live and die free, and here is this sign. (He showed his c.o.c.kade.) The citizens, who have adopted the _bonnet rouge_ through a laudable patriotism, will lose nothing by laying it aside. The friends of the Revolution will continue to recognise each other by the sign of virtue and of reason. These emblems are ours alone; all those may be imitated by traitors and aristocrats. In the name of France, I rally you again to the only standard that strikes terror into her foes. Let us alone retain the c.o.c.kade and the banner, beneath which the const.i.tution was born."

The _bonnet rouge_ instantly disappeared in the a.s.sembly; but even the voice of Robespierre, and the resolutions of the Jacobins, could not arrest the outbreak of enthusiasm that had placed the sign of _avenging equality_ ("_l'egalite vengeresse_") on every head; and the evening of the day on which it was repudiated at the Jacobins saw it inaugurated at all the theatres. The bust of Voltaire, the destroyer of prejudice, was adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty, amidst the shouts of the spectators, whilst the cap and pike became the uniform and weapon of the citizen soldier. The Girondists, who had attacked this sign as long as it appeared to them the livery of Robespierre, began to excuse it as soon as Robespierre repulsed it. Brissot himself, in his report of what pa.s.sed at this sitting, regrets this symbol, because, "adopted by the most indignant portion of the people, it humiliated the rich, and became the terror of the aristocracy." The breach between these two men became wider every day, and there was not sufficient s.p.a.ce in the Jacobins, the a.s.sembly, and the supreme power for these rival ambitions, which strove for the dictators.h.i.+p of opinion.

The nomination of the ministers, which was entirely under the influence of Girondists, the councils held at Madame Roland's, the presence of Brissot, of Guadet, of Vergniaud at the deliberations of the ministers, the appointment of all their friends to the government offices, served as themes for the clamours of the _exaltes_ of the Jacobins. These Jacobins were termed Montagnards, from the high benches occupied in the a.s.sembly by the friends of Robespierre and Danton. "Remember," they said, "the almost prophetic sagacity of Robespierre, when, in answer to Brissot, who attacked the former minister De Lessart, he made this allusion to the Girondist leader, which has been so speedily justified,--'For me, who do not aim at the ministry either for myself or my friends.'" On their side the Girondist journals heaped opprobrium on this handful of calumniators and petty tyrants, who resembled Catiline in crimes if not in courage; thus war commenced by sarcasm.