eemed me worse than I was; the
others, better. I have merely followed my nature, and that impelled me,
above all, to liberty. I fancied I saw her image in the parliaments,
which at least possessed her tone and forms, and I embraced this phantom
of representative freedom. Thrice did I sacrifice myself for those
parliaments; twice from a conviction on my part; the third, not to belie
what I had previously done. I had been in England; I had there seen true
liberty, and I doubted not that the States-General, and France also,
wished to obtain freedom. Scarcely had I foreseen that France would
possess citizens, than I wished to be one of these citizens myself, and
I made unhesitatingly the sacrifice of all the rank and privileges that
separated me from the nation: they cost me nothing; I aspired to be a
deputy--I was one. I sided with the _tiers etat_, not from factious
feeling, but from justice. In my opinion, it was impossible to prevent
the completion of the Revolution, although some persons around the king
thought otherwise. The troops were assembled, and surrounded the
National Assembly. Paris imagined it was threatened, and rose _en
masse_; the Gardes Francaises, who lived amongst the people, followed
the stream, and the report was circulated that I had bribed this
regiment with my gold. I will frankly declare my opinion: if the Gardes
Francaises had acted differently, I should in that case have deemed they
had been bought over; for their hostility against the people of Paris
would have been unnatural. My bust was earned with that of M. Necker on
the 14th of July. Why? because this minister, on whom every public hope
reposed, was the idol of the nation, and because my name was amongst the
list of those deputies of the Assembly, who, it was said, were to have
been arrested by the troops summoned to Versailles. Amidst all these
events, so favourable to a factious man, what was my behaviour? I
withdrew from the eyes of the people: I did not flatter their excesses,
but retired to my house at Mousseaux, where I passed the night; and the
next morning I went, unattended, to the National Assembly at Versailles.
At the fortunate moment when the king resolved to cast himself into the
arms of the Assembly, I refused to form one of the deputation of members
despatched to Paris to announce these tidings to the capital, for I
feared lest some of the homages which the city owed to the king alone
might be paid to me. And such was again m