engeance. The royalist party had voted the
non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's
grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues. The republican
party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists. The
constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the
people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which
they expected their successors would present. It was a vote of
contending passions, all evil, and which could only produce a loss to
all parties. The king alone was averse from this measure. He perceived
repentance in the National Assembly--he was in communication with its
leading members--he had the key to many consciences. A new nation,
unknown and impatient, was about to present it before him in a new
Assembly. The reports of the press, the clubs, and places of popular
bruit told him, but too plainly, on what men the excited people would
bestow their confidence. He preferred known, exhausted, opponents, men
partly gained over, to new and ardent enemies who would surpass in
exactions those they replaced. To them there only remained his throne to
overthrow,--to him there was left to yield but his life.

XX.

The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were
those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton;--in the departments, those of
Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet,--who were afterwards Girondists; and
those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who,
subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or
his victims. Condorcet was a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as
bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his
philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the
omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid.
Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his
most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth: his science
was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by
science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph
necessarily over all the resistance of matter; must lay bare all the
creative powers of nature, and renew the face of creation. He had made
of this system a line of politics, whose first idea was to adore the
future and abhor the past. He had the cool fanaticism of logic, and the
reflective anger of conviction. A pupil of Voltaire, D'Alembe