ere in the personal
service of the King, as you are," replied Dumouriez, "I would think and
act the same; I esteem your devotion, and love you the more for it;
each of us is faithful in his own way; you, to Louis; I, to the King of
the French. May both of us felicitate him some day on his happiness!"
Then the two friends separated, after embracing each other with tears.

The sole thought of Dumouriez now was to escape from the city where he
had witnessed so many intrigues and been so often deceived. He was
very sorrowful at heart. Ordinarily so gay, so brilliant, so full of
Gallic and _Rabelaisian_ wit, power had made him melancholy. His
ministerial life left on him an abiding impression of bitterness and
repugnance. "One needs," he has said, "either a patriotism equal to
any test, or else an insatiable ambition, to aspire in any way whatever
after those difficult positions where one is surrounded with snares and
calumnies. One learns only too soon that men are not worth the trouble
one takes to govern them." June 19, he wrote to the Assembly, asking
an authorization to repair to the Army of the North. "I have spent
thirty-six years in military and diplomatic service, and have
twenty-two wounds," said he in this letter; "I envy the fate of the
virtuous Gouvion, and should {175} esteem myself happy if a cannon-ball
could put an end to all differences concerning me." He never again
returned either to the palace, the Assembly, or any other place where
he might encounter either ministers, deputies, or persons belonging to
the court. He started for the army, June 26, regarding it as "the only
asylum where an honest man might still be safe. At least, death
presents itself there under the attractive aspect of glory." He left
in the capital "consternation, suspicion, hatred, which pierced through
the frivolity of the wretched Parisians." With an intuition worthy of
a man of genius, he foresaw the vicious circle about to be described by
French history, and divined that by plunging into license men return
inevitably to servitude, because "it is impossible to sustain liberty
with an absurd government, founded on barbarity, terror, and the
subversion of every principle necessary to the maintenance of human
society." Two years later, in 1794, he wrote in his Memoirs: "The
serpent will recoil upon itself. His tail, which is anarchy, will
re-enter his throat, which is despotism."

[1] The advanced republican party