ight time things, names, and faces; he likes work, and reads
every thing; he is never idle for a moment; a tender parent, a model of
a husband: chaste in feeling, he has done away with all those scandals
which disgraced the courts of his predecessors; he loves none but the
queen, and his condescension, which is occasionally injurious to his
politics, is at least a weakness 'which leans to virtue's side.' Had he
been born two centuries earlier his peaceable reign would have been
counted amongst the number of happy years of the monarchy. Circumstances
appear to have influenced his mind. The Revolution has convinced him of
its necessity, and we must convince him of its possibility. In our
hands the king may better serve it than any other citizen in the
kingdom; by enlightening this prince we may be faithful alike to his
interests and those of the nation--the king and Revolution must be with
us as one."

X.

Thus said Roland in the first dazzling of power; his wife listened with
a smile of incredulity on her lips. Her keener glance had at the instant
measured a career more vast and a termination more decisive than the
timid and transitory compromise between a degraded royalty and an
imperfect revolution. It would have cost her too much to renounce the
ideal of her ardent soul; all her wishes tended to a republic; all her
exertions, all her words, all her aspirations, were destined,
unconsciously to herself, to urge thither her husband and his
associates.

"Mistrust every man's perfidy, and more especially your own virtue," was
her reply to the weak and vain Roland. "You see in this world but
courts, where all is unreal, and where the most polished surfaces
conceal the most sinister combinations. You are only an honest
countryman wandering amongst a crowd of courtiers,--virtue in danger
amidst a myriad of vices: they speak our language, and we do not know
theirs. Would it be possible that they should not deceive us? Louis
XVI., of a degenerate race, without elevation of mind, or energy of
will, allowed himself to be enthralled early in life by religious
prejudices, which have even lessened his intellect; fascinated by a
giddy queen, who unites to Austrian insolence the enchantment of beauty
and the highest rank, and who makes of her secret and corrupt court the
sanctuary of her pleasures and the focus of her vices, this prince,
blinded on the one hand by the priests, and on the other by love, holds
at random the loose