by circumstances or by
a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics. Perhaps I
may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to
characterize Bailly's connection with his co-laborers in the first
municipality of Paris.

The great question on the verification of the powers was already
strongly agitated, the day that Bailly and the other Deputies of Paris
for the first time were able to go to Versailles; our academician had
only spoken once in that majestic assembly, viz: to induce the adoption
of the method of voting by members being _seated_ or _standing_,--when,
on the 3d of June, he was named Senior of the Deputies of the Communes
(or Commons). Formerly, the right of presiding in the third house of the
kingdom belonged to the provost of the merchants. Bailly in his
diffidence thought that the assembly, in assigning the chair to him, had
wished to compensate the capital for the loss of an old privilege. This
consideration induced him to accept of a duty that he thought above his
powers,--he who always depicted himself as timid to an extreme, and not
possessing a facility of speaking.

Men's minds were more animated, more ardent in 1789 than those would
admit who always see in the present a faithful image of the past. But
calumny, that murderous arm of political party, already respected no
position. Knowledge, loyalty, virtue, did not suffice to shelter any one
from its poisoned darts. Bailly experienced it on the very day after his
nomination to such an eminent post as President of the Communes.

On the 29th of May, the Communes had voted an address to the king on the
constantly recurring difficulties that the nobility opposed to the union
of the States General in one assembly. In order to carry out this most
solemn deliberation, Bailly solicited an audience, in which the moderate
and respectful expression of the anxiety of six hundred loyal deputies
was to be presented to the monarch. In the midst of these strifes the
Dauphin died. Without taking the trouble to consult dates, the court
party immediately represented Bailly as a stranger to the commonest
proprieties, and totally deficient in feeling; he ought, they said, to
have respected the most allowable of griefs; his importunities had been
barbarous.

I had imagined that such ridiculous accusations were no longer thought
of; the categorical explanations that Bailly himself gave on this topic,
seemed to me as if they would have