iously known this
princess through a cloud of prejudice, amid which parties enshroud those
whom they wish to have detested. A sudden communication caused this
conventional atmosphere to dissipate, and he adored, when close, what he
had calumniated at a distance. The very character which fortune had cast
for him in the destiny of this woman had something unexpected and
romantic, capable of dazzling his lofty imagination, and deeply
affecting his generous disposition. Young, obscure, unknown but a few
months before, and now celebrated, popular, and powerful--thrown in the
name of a sovereign assembly between the people and the king--he became
the protector of those whose enemy he had been. Royal and suppliant
hands met his plebeian touch! He who opposed the popular royalty of
talent and eloquence to the royalty of the blood of the Bourbons! He
covered with his body the life of those who had been his masters. His
very devotion was a triumph; the object of that devotion was in his
queen. That queen was young, handsome, majestic; but brought to the
level of ordinary humanity by her alarm for her husband and his
children. Her tearful eyes besought their safety from Barnave's eyes. He
was the leading orator in that Assembly which held the fate of the
monarch in his house. He was the favourite of that people whom he
controlled by a gesture, and whose fury he averted during the long
journey between the throne and death. The queen had placed her son, the
young dauphin, between his knees. Barnave's fingers had played with the
fair hair of the child. The king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, had
distinguished, with tact, Barnave from the inflexible and brutal Petion.
They had conversed with him as to their situation: they complained of
having been deceived as to the nature of the public mind in France. They
unveiled their repentance and constitutional inclinations. These
conversations, marred in the carriage by the presence of the other
commissioner and the eyes of the people, had been stealthily and more
intimately renewed in the meetings which the royal family nightly held.
Mysterious political correspondences and secret interviews in the
Tuileries were contrived. Barnave, the inflexible partisan, reached
Paris a devoted man. The nocturnal conference of Mirabeau with the
queen, in the park of Saint Cloud, was ambitioned by his rival; but
Mirabeau sold, Barnave gave, himself. Heaps of gold bought the man of
genius; a glance seduced th