dol of the Revolution:--"Liberator
of two worlds, flower of Janissaries, phoenix of Alguazils-major, Don
Quixotte of Capet and the two chambers, constellation of the white
horse[2], my voice is too weak to raise itself above the clamour of your
thirty thousand spies, and as many more your satellites, above the noise
of your four hundred drums, and your cannons loaded with grape. I had
until now misrepresented your--more than--royal highness through the
allusions of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport. It was after them that I
denounced you to the eighty-three departments as an ambitious man who
only cared for parade, a slave of the court similar to those marshals of
the league to whom revolt had given the _baton_, and who, looking upon
themselves as bastards, were desirous of becoming legitimate; but all of
a sudden you embrace each other, and proclaim yourselves mutually
fathers of your country! You say to the nation, 'Confide in us; we are
the Cincinnati, the Washingtons, the Aristides.' Which of these two
testimonies are we to believe? Foolish people! The Parisians are like
those Athenians to whom Demosthenes said, 'Shall you always resemble
those athletes who struck in one place cover it with their hand,--struck
in another place they place their hand there, and thus always occupied
with the blows they receive, do not know either how to strike or defend
themselves!' They are beginning to doubt whether Louis XVI. could be
perjured since he is at Varennes. I think I see the same great eyes open
when they shall see La Fayette open the gates of the capital to
despotism and aristocracy. May I be deceived in my conjectures, for I am
going from Paris, as Camillus my patron departed from an ungrateful
country, wishing it every kind of prosperity. I have no occasion to have
been an emperor like Diocletian to know that the fine lettuces of
Salernum, which are far superior to the empire of the East, are quite
equal to the gay scarf which a municipal authority wears, and the
uneasiness with which a Jacobin journalist returns to his home in the
evening, fearing always lest he should fall into an ambuscade of the
cut-throats of the general. For me it was not to establish two chambers
that I first mounted the tricolour cockade!"

X.

Such was the general tone of the press, such the exhaustless laughter
which this young man diffused, like the Aristophanes of an irritated
people. He accustomed it to revile men, majesty, misfortune, and wo