worship a gilded chair," said he, "but I dread a struggle between the
two powers. You will not permit that the words _sire_ and _majesty_ be
used, you will not even permit us to applaud the king; as if it were
possible to forbid the people from manifesting their gratitude when the
king has merited it. Do not let us dishonour ourselves, gentlemen, by a
culpable ingratitude towards the National Assembly, who has retained
these marks of respect for the king. The founders of liberty were not
slaves; and previous to fixing the prerogatives of royalty, they
established the rights of the people. It is the nation that is honoured
in the person of its hereditary representative. It is the nation who,
after having created royalty, has invested it with a splendour that
remounts to the source from whence it sprung, and gives it a double
lustre."

Ducastel, the president of the deputation sent to the king, spoke on the
same side, but having inadvertently used the expression _sovereign_, in
speaking of the king, and that the legislative power was vested in the
Assembly and the king, this blasphemy and involuntary heresy raised a
terrible storm in the chamber. Every word of this nature seemed to them
to threaten a counter-revolution; for they were still so near despotism,
that they feared at each step again to fall into its toils. The people
was a slave, freed but yesterday, and who still trembled at the clank of
his chains. However, the offensive decree was repealed, and this
retraction was rapturously hailed by the royalists and the national
guard. The constitutionalists saw in it the augury of renewed harmony
between the ruling powers of the state; the king saw in it the triumph
of a fidelity that had been deadened, but which blazed forth again on
the least appearance of outrage to his person.

They were all deceived: it was but a movement of generosity, succeeding
one of brutality; the hesitation of a nation that dares not, at one
stroke, destroy the idol before which it has so long bowed the knee.

The royalists, however, attacked this return to moderation in their
journals. "See," they cried, "how contemptible is this revolution--how
conscious of its own weakness! This feeling of its own feebleness is a
defeat already anticipated; see in two days how often it has given
itself the lie. The authority that concedes is lost unless it possess
the art of masking its retreat, of retreating by slow and imperceptible
steps, and of cau