s, by an assassination or usurpation. Uniting with the
_tiers etat_, to obtain equality and the friendship of the nation
against the nobility, he took the oath of the Tennis Court. He took his
place behind Mirabeau, to disobey the king. Nominated president by the
National Assembly, he refused this honour in order to remain a citizen.
The day on which the dismissal of Necker betrayed the hostile projects
of the court, and when the people of Paris named its leaders and
defenders by acclamation, the name of the Duc d'Orleans was the first
uttered. France took in the gardens of the palace the colours of his
livery for a cockade. At the voice of Camille Desmoulins, who uttered
the cry of alarm in the Palais Royal, the populace gathered, Legendre
and Freron led them; they placed the bust of the Duc d'Orleans beside
that of Necker, covered them with black crape, and promenaded them,
bareheaded themselves, in the presence of the silent citizens. Blood
flowed; the dead body of one of the citizens who carried the busts,
killed by the mob, serving as a standard to the people. The Duc
d'Orleans was thus mixed up from his palace--his name and his
image--with the first struggle and first murder of liberty. This was
enough to make it believed that his hand moved all the threads of
events. Whether from lack of boldness or ambition, he never assumed the
appearance of the part which public opinion assigned to him. He did not
then appear to push things beyond the conquest of a constitution for his
country, and the character of a great patriot for himself. He respected
or despised the throne. One or other of these feelings gave him
importance in the eyes of history. All the world was of his party except
himself.

Impartial men did honour to his moderation, the revolutionists imputed
shame to his character. Mirabeau, who was seeking a pretender to
personify the revolt, had had secret interviews with the Duc d'Orleans;
had tested his ambition, to judge if it aspired to the throne. He had
left him dissatisfied; he had even betrayed his dissatisfaction by angry
phrases. Mirabeau required a conspirator; he had only found a patriot.
What he despised in the Duc d'Orleans was not the meditation of a crime,
but the refusal to be his accomplice. He had not anticipated such
scruples; he revenged himself by terming this carelessness about the
throne the cowardice of an ambitious man.

La Fayette instinctively hated in the Duc d'Orleans an influential