ffered perspectively to the ambition of a foe!

BOOK VI.

I.

Such were the mutually threatening dispositions of France and Europe at
the moment when the Constituted Assembly, after having proclaimed its
principles, left to others to defend and apply them; like the legislator
who retires into private life, thence to watch the effect and the
working of his laws. The great idea of France abdicated, if we may use
the expression, with the Constituted Assembly; and the government fell
from its high position into the hands of the inexperience or the
impulses of a new people. From the 29th of September to the 1st of
October, there seemed to be a new reign: the Legislative Assembly found
themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of
authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt on
their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise,
that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult
to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed in its
grasp.

II.

An immense crowd had attended the first sittings; the exterior aspect of
the Assembly had entirely changed; almost all the white heads had
disappeared, and it seemed as though France had become young again in
the course of a night. The expression of the physiognomies, the
gestures, the attire of the members of the Assembly were no longer the
same; that pride of the French noblesse, visible alike in the look and
bearing; that dignity of the clergy and the magistrates; that austere
gravity of the deputies of the _Tiers etat_ had suddenly given place to
the representatives of a new people, whose confusion and turbulence
announced rather the invasion of power than the custom and the
possession of supreme power. Many members were remarkable for their
youth; and when the president, by virtue of his age, summoned all the
deputies who had not yet attained their twenty-sixth year, in order to
form the provisional _bureau_, sixty young men presented themselves, and
disputed the office of secretary to the Assembly. This youth of the
representatives of the nation alarmed some, whilst it rejoiced others;
for if, on the one hand, such a representation did not possess that
mature calmness and that authority of age that the ancient legislators
sought in the council of the people; on the other, this sudden return to
youth of the representatives of the nation, seemed a symptom of the
reg