to God, they
had employed the adventures of their youth in similar espionages! They
would not have begun the Revolution like factionists, they would have
conducted it with wisdom, they would have preserved the esteem of the
nation, they would not have been the prime authors of the King's death,
either by betraying or abandoning him."

The new Minister of Foreign Affairs began to play his role of leader of
French diplomacy in a {101} singular fashion. Repairing to the Jacobin
Club, he described himself as their liegeman, assumed the red bonnet in
their presence, and, with it on his head, announced that as soon as war
should be declared, he would throw away his pen in order to resume his
sword. Let us add that he was simultaneously trying to conciliate the
good graces of Louis XVI. and to persuade him that if he leaned upon
the Jacobins, it was solely in the hope of serving the King and
consolidating the throne. At the same time he appointed as director of
foreign affairs that Bonne-Carrere whose portrait has been traced in
this wise by Brissot: "Falling with all his vices and perverse habits
into the midst of a revolution whereby the people had recovered
sovereignty, he merely changed his idol without changing his idolatry.
He caressed the people instead of caressing the great, made the hall of
the Jacobins his OEil-de-Boeuf, played valet to the successful parties
one after another, the Lameths and the Mirabeaus, and succeeded in
raising himself from the secretaryship of the Jacobins to the embassy
of Liege, by the aid of that very Montmorin who detested the Jacobins,
and could but advance a man who betrayed them."

Dumouriez then, following the example of Mirabeau, was about to play a
double game; to be revolutionary with the Revolution and a courtier
with the court. As to Madame Roland, he never placed himself at her
feet. The despotism of this female minister, the pretentious of this
demagogic bluestocking, {102} her affectation of puritan rigor, her
mania for directing everything, shocked the good sense of a man who
believed that woman is made to please, not to reign. It was repugnant
to this soldier to take his orders from the Egeria of the Girondins.
On the other hand, Dumouriez was displeasing to Madame Roland. She
found him too dissolute and not sentimental enough. She could not
pardon his having Madame de Beauvert for mistress and Bonne-Carrere for
confidant. She admitted neither his free-and-easy ton