t is on
the loftiest summit that right has always its dwelling; and that to
this summit we too at the end must climb, after much precious time has
been lost on many an intermediate eminence. And what is a sage, a great
man, a hero, if not one who has dared to go, alone and ahead of the
others, to the deserted table-land that lay more or less within sight
of all men?

21. We do not imply that Louis XVI. should necessarily have been a man
of this stamp, a man of genius; although to have genius seems almost
the duty of him who sways in his hands the destiny of vast numbers of
men. Nor do we claim that the best men among us to-day would have been
able to escape his errors, or the misfortunes to which they gave rise.
And yet there is one thing certain: that of all these misfortunes none
had super-human origin; not one was supernaturally, or too
mysteriously, inevitable. They came not from another world; they were
launched by no monstrous god, capricious and incomprehensible. They
were born of an idea of justice that men failed to grasp; an idea of
justice that suddenly had wakened in life, but never had lain asleep in
the reason of man. And is there a thing in this world can be more
reassuring, or nearer to us, more profoundly human, than an idea of
justice? Louis XVI. may well have regretted that this idea, that
shattered his peace, should have awakened during his reign; but this
was the only reproach he could level at fate; and when we murmur at
fate ourselves our complaints have much the same value. For the rest,
it is legitimate enough to suppose that there needed but one single act
of energy, absolute loyalty, disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to
change the whole course of events. If the flight to Varennes--in itself
an act of duplicity and culpable weakness--had only been arranged a
little less childishly, foolishly (as any man would have arranged it
who was accustomed to the habits of life), there can be not a doubt
that Louis XVI. would never have died on the scaffold. Was it a god, or
his blind reliance on Marie Antoinette, that led him to entrust de
Fersen--a stupid, conceited, and tactless creature--with the
preparations and control of this disastrous journey? Was it a force
instinct with great mystery, or only his own unconsciousness,
heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange apathetic
submission--such as the weak and the idle will often display at moments
of danger, when they seem almost to challe