greatest revolution that a
nation ever attempted, we required a leader, whose mind was on an
equality with so great an event. We accepted you; the pliability of your
features, your studied orations, your premeditated axioms--all those
productions of art that nature disavows, seemed suspicious to the more
clear-sighted patriots. The boldest of them followed you, tore the mask
from your visage, and cried--Citizens, this hero is but a courtier,
this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no
longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws; the people is more
formidable to its conductors; they have reassumed the whip and spur, and
you fly. Let civic crowns strew your paths, though we remain; but where
shall we find a Brutus?"

XXII.

Bailly, mayor of Paris, withdrew at the same time, abandoned by that
party of whom he had been the idol, and whose victim he began to be; but
his philosophic mind rated more highly the good done to the people than
its favour, and more ambitious of being useful than of governing it, he
already testified that heroic contempt for the calumnies of his enemies
he afterwards displayed for death.

His voice was, however, lost in the tumult of the approaching municipal
elections; two men already disputed the dignity of mayor of Paris, for
in proportion as the royal authority declined, and that of the
constitution was absorbed in the troubles of the kingdom, the mayor of
Paris would become the real dictator of the capital.

These two men were La Fayette and Petion. La Fayette supported by the
constitutionalists and the national guard, Petion by the Girondists and
the Jacobins. The royalist party, by pronouncing for or against one of
them, would decide the election. The king had no longer the influence of
the government, which he had suffered to escape from his grasp, but he
still possessed the occult powers of corruption over the leaders of the
different parties. A portion of the twenty-five millions of francs
(1,000,000_l._) was applied by M. de Laporte, the intendant de la liste
civile, and by MM. Bertrand de Molleville and Montmorin, his ministers,
in purchasing votes at the elections, motions at the clubs, applause or
hisses in the Assembly. These subsidies, which had commenced with
Mirabeau, now descended to the lowest dregs of the factions; they bribed
the royalist press, and found their way into the hands of the orators
and writers apparently most inveterate against the cou