rondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to
make war on the princes, who were his brothers, and the emperor, whom
they believed to be his accomplice.

The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these
two _vetos_ as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendee were
attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious
clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who
respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la
Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a petition in
which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary
inquisition: counter-petitions poured in from the departments.

V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of
the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of
his talent.

"Worthy representatives," ran the petition[13], "applauses are the civil
list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages
of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National
Assembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his _veto_ to
your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the
majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do
not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of
the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon
profoundly--_It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a
height_. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the
king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that
he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries
foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree,
against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be
precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the
citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet
decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this
petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great
counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for
signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves.
Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and
abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication
and treason, that profoundly indignant at