rse the club. Whilst the Girondists
followed this course, the royalists continually urged the people to
excesses through the medium of their papers, in order, as they said, to
find a remedy for the evil in the evil itself. Thus they encouraged the
Jacobins against the Feuillants, and heaped ridicule and insult on those
leaders of the constitutional party who sought to save a remnant of the
monarchy; for that which they detested most was the success of the
revolution. Their doctrine of absolute power was less humiliatingly
contradicted in their eyes by the overthrow of the empire and throne,
than in the constitutional monarchy that preserved at once the king and
liberty. Since the aristocracy lost the possession of the supreme power,
its sole ambition--its only aim--was to see it fall into the hands of
those most unworthy to hold it. Incapable of again rising by its own
force, it sought to find in disorder the means of so doing; and from the
first day of the Revolution to the last, this party had no other
instinct, and it was thus that it ruined itself whilst it ruined the
monarchy. It carried the hatred of the Revolution even to posterity; and
though they did not take an active part in the crimes of the Revolution,
yet their best wishes were with it. Every fresh excess of the people
gave a new ray of hope to its enemies: such is the policy of despair,
blind and criminal as herself.

XXI.

An example of this at this moment occurred. La Fayette resigned the
command of the national guard into the hands of the council general of
the commune. At this meeting blazed the last faint spark of popular
favour. After he quitted the chamber a deliberation was held as to what
mark of gratitude and regard the city of Paris should offer him. The
general addressed a farewell letter to the civic force, and affected to
believe that the formation of the constitution was the era of the
Revolution, and reduced him, like Washington, to the rank of a simple
citizen of a free country. "The time of revolution," said he, in this
letter, "has given place to a regular organisation, owing to the liberty
and prosperity it assures us. I feel it is now my duty to my country to
return unreservedly into her hands all the force and influence with
which I was intrusted for her defence during the tempests that convulsed
her--such is my only ambition. Beware how you believe," added he, in
conclusion, "that every species of despotism, is extinct!" And he t