UMOURIEZ, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

Madam Roland had wished to reign alone. She saw an influential rival
in Dumouriez, and at once conceived for him an instinctive repugnance
and suspicion. She met him first on March 23, 1792, at the time when,
as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he came to salute Roland, just named
Minister of the Interior, as his colleague. As soon as he departed:
"There," said she to her husband, "is a man with a crafty mind and a
false glance, against whom it is probably more necessary to be on one's
guard than any other person; he expressed great satisfaction at the
patriotic choice he was deputed to announce; but I should not be at all
surprised if he were to have you dismissed some day." She thought she
recognized in Dumouriez at first sight, "a witty roue, an insolent
chevalier who makes sport of everything except his own interests and
glory."

Later on she drew the following portrait of him: "Among all his
colleagues, he had most of what is called wit, and less than any of
morality. Diligent and brave, a good general, a skilful courtier,
writing well and expressing himself with ease, capable of {95} great
enterprises, all he lacked was character enough to balance his mind, or
a cooler brain to carry out the plans he had conceived. Agreeable to
his friends, and ready to betray them, gallant to women, but not at all
suited to succeed with those among them who are susceptible to
affectionate relations, he was made for the ministerial intrigues of a
corrupt court."

The nomination of Dumouriez as Minister of Foreign Affairs is one of
the most curious and unforeseen events of this strange epoch. Few men
have had a career so adventurous and agitated as his. A complex and
mobile nature, where the intriguer and the great man were blended into
one, he never commanded esteem, but at certain moments he secured
admiration. Napoleon I. seems to have been too severe when he said of
him that he was "only a miserable intriguer." The man who opened the
series of great French victories, and who saved his country from
invasion by his admirable defence of the defiles of Argonne, merited
more than this disdainful mention. It is none the less certain,
however, that one scents, as it were, an air of Beaumarchais in the
Memoirs of Dumouriez, and that there is more than one link of character
and existence between the author of the _Mariage de Figaro_ and the
victor of Jemmapes. Both were men without prin