m ameliorating, the situation continued to grow worse. Petion's
emissaries stirred up the inhabitants of the faubourgs. That evening
Dumouriez sent a letter to the King announcing that a riot was
apprehended. Louis XVI. suspected that the minister was lying, and
wrote to him: "Do not believe, Monsieur, that any one can succeed in
frightening me by threats; my resolution is taken." Dumouriez had
based his entire scheme on the hypothesis that the decree concerning
the priests would be accepted by the King. From the moment that Louis
XVI. rejected it, Dumouriez no longer hoped to remain in the ministry.
He wrote again, imploring the sovereign to give it his sanction, and
announcing that, in case of his refusal, the ministers would all feel
obliged to retire. The next day, June 15, the King received them in
his chamber. "Are you still," said he to Dumouriez, "in the same
sentiments expressed in your letter last evening?"--"Yes, Sire, if Your
Majesty will not permit yourself to be moved by our fidelity and
attachment."--"Very well," replied Louis XVI., with a gloomy air,
"since your decision is made, I accept your resignation and will
provide for it." Dumouriez was no {170} longer a minister. In his
Memoirs he describes himself as much affected, "not on account of
quitting a dangerous post, which simply made his existence disturbed
and painful, but because he saw all his trouble thrown away, and the
King handed over to the fury of cruel enemies and the criminal
indiscretion of false friends."

At bottom, Dumouriez inspired nobody with confidence. He belonged to
no party, and no one knew his opinions. He had leaned on both Jacobins
and Girondins, while at the same time he was inspiring certain hopes in
the Feuillants, and flattering the King, to whom he promised signs and
wonders. Too revolutionary for the conservatives and too conservative
for the revolutionists, he had tried a see-saw policy which would no
longer answer. It became indispensable to make a choice. It was
impossible to please both the Jacobins and the court.

And yet Dumouriez was a man of resources, and it is much to be
regretted, on the King's account, that no better understanding could be
arrived at between them. More successfully than any one else,
Dumouriez might have resorted to bold measures and called in at this
time the intervention of the army, as he did several years later. He
loved money and rank; royalty still excited a great pres