reins of an empire which is escaping from his grasp.
France, exhausted of men, does not give to him, either in Maurepas,
Necker, or Calonne, a minister capable of supporting him. The
aristocracy is barren, and produces nothing but to its shame; the
government must be renewed in the holier and deeper fount of the nation;
the time for a democracy is here,--why delay it! You are its men, its
virtues, its characters, its intelligence. The Revolution is behind you,
it hails you, urges you onward, and would you surrender it to the first
smile from the king because he has the condescension of a man of the
people? No: Louis XVI., half dethroned by the nation, cannot love the
nation that fetters him; he may feign to caress his chains, but all his
thoughts are devoted to the idea of how he can spurn them. His only
resource at this moment is to protest his attachment to the Revolution,
and to lull the ministers whom the Revolution empowers to watch over his
intrigues. But this pretence is the last and most dangerous of the
conspiracies of the throne. The constitution is the forfeiture of Louis
XVI., and the patriot ministers are his superintendents. Fallen
greatness cannot love the cause of its decadence; no man likes his
humiliation. Trust in human nature, Roland--that alone never deceives,
and mistrust courts. Your virtue is too elevated to see the snares which
courtiers spread beneath your feet."

XI.

Such language amazed Roland. Brissot, Condorcet, Vergniaud, Gensonne,
Guadet, and especially Buzot, the friend and most intimate confidant of
Madame Roland, strengthened at their evening meetings the mistrust of
the minister. He armed himself with fresh distrust from their
conversations, and entered the council with a more frowning brow and
more resolute determination: the king's frankness disarmed
him--Dumouriez discouraged him by his gaiety--power softened him by its
influence. He wavered between the two great difficulties of the moment,
the double sanction required from the king for the decrees which were
most repugnant to his heart and conscience, the decree against the
emigrants, and the decree against the nonjuring priests; and he wavered
as to war.

During this tergiversation of Roland and his colleagues, Dumouriez
acquired the favour of the king and the people, the secret of his
conduct being comprised in what he had said a short time before to M. de
Montmorin, in a secret conversation he had with that minister. "If