330 MIRABEAU'S ELOQUENCE AT THE CONVENTION.

speeches, asked the Assembly whether its powers were unlimited, -whether it considered itself a National Convention; they insisted on this distinction between convention and legislative assembly. These subtleties provoked Mirabeau into one of those magnificent bursts of eloquence which reached the sublime: "You ask," said he, "how, being deputies of bailiwicks, we have made ourselves a convention? I will answer. The day when, finding our assembly-room shut, bristling and defiled with bayonets, we hastened to the first place that could contain us, and swore we would rather perish,- -on that day, if we were not a convention, we became one. Let them now go and hunt out of the useless nomenclature of civilians the definition of the words National Convention! Gentlemen, you all know the conduct of that Roman who, to save his country from a great conspiracy, had been obliged to outstep the powers conferred upon him by the laws. A captious tribune required from him the oath that he had respected them. He thought, by that insidious proposal, to leave the consul no alternative but perjury, or an embarrassing avowal. I swear, said that great man, that I have saved the republic! Gentlemen, I swear also, that you have saved the commonwealth!"

At that splendid oath, the whole Assembly arose, and decreed that there should be no elections till the constitution was finished.

The Royalists were stunned by the blow. Several, nevertheless, thought that the hope of their party, the new election, might even have turned against them; that it might, perhaps, have brought about a more hostile and violent assembly. In the immense fermentation of the kingdom, and the increasing ebullition of public feeling, who could be sure of seeing his way clearly? The mere organisation of the municipalities had shaken France to her centre. Scarcely were they formed when, by their side, societies and clubs were already organised to watch over them: formidable, but useful societies; eminently useful in such a crisis; a necessary organ and instrument of public distrust, in presence of so many conspiracies.

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The clubs will grow greater and greater; it must be so the state of things requires it. This period is not yet that of their greatest power. For the rest of France, it is the period of confederations; but the clubs already reigu at Paris.

CLUBS OF THE CORDELIERS AND JACOBINS.

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Paris seems to be watching over France, panting and on the alert; keeping its sixty districts permanently assembled; not acting, but ever ready. It stands listening and uneasy, like a sentinel in the neighbourhood of the enemy. The watch-word "Beware! is heard every hour; and two voices are incessantly urging it forward,-the club of the Cordeliers, and that of the Jacobins. In the next book, I shall enter those formidable caverns; in this place I abstain. The Jacobins are not yet characterised, being in their infancy, or rather in a spurious constitutional age, in which they are governed by such men as Duport and the Lameths.

The principal character of those great laboratories of agitation and public surveillance, of those powerful machines (I speak especially of the Jacobins), is that, as in the case with all machinery, collective action was far more predominant than individual influence; that the strongest and most heroic individual there lost his advantages. In societies of this kind, active mediocrity rises to importance; but genius has very little weight. Accordingly, Mirabeau never willingly frequented the clubs, nor belonged exclusively to any; paying short visits, and passing an hour at the Jacobins, and another in the same evening at the club of '89, formed in the Palais-Royal by Sieyes, Bailly, Lafayette, Chapelier, and Talleyrand (May 13).

This was a dignified and elegant club, but devoid of action: true power resided in the old smoky convent of the Jacobins. The dominion of intrigue and commonplace oratory, there sovereignly swayed by the triumvirate of Duport, Barnave, and Lameth, contributed not a little to render Mirabeau accessible to the suggestions of the Court.

This man was contradiction personified. What was he in reality? A royalist, a noble in the most absolute sense. And what was his action? Exactly the contrary; he shattered royalty with the thunders of his eloquence.

If he really wished to defend it, he had not a moment to lose; it was hourly declining. It had lost Paris; but it still possessed large scattered crowds of adherents in the provinces. By what art could these be collected into a body? This was the dream of Mirabeau. He meditated organising a vast correspondence, doubtless similar, and in opposition to that of the Jacobins. Such was the groundwork of Mirabeau's

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332

ENGLAND'S DREAD OF REVOLUTION.

treaty with the Court (May 10th). He would have constituted in his house a sort of ministry of public opinion. For this purpose, or under this pretext, he received money and a regular salary; and as he was accustomed to do everything, whether good or evil, boldly and publicly, he established himself in grand style, kept his carriage and open house in the little mansion which still exists in the Chaussée d'Antin.

All this was but too manifest; and it appeared still clearer, when, from the midst of the left of the Assembly, he was seen to speak with the right in favour of royalty, to obtain for the king the initiative of making peace or war.

The king had lost the management of the interior, and afterwards power in the law courts: the judges as well as the municipal magistrates were being abstracted from his prerogative. If he was now to lose war, what would remain of royalty? Such was the argument of Cazalès. Barnave and the opposite side had a thousand ready answers without uttering a word effectually. The truth was, that the king was distrusted; that the Revolution had been made only by shattering the sword in his hands; that of all his powers the most dangerous that they could leave in his hands was war.

The occasion of the debate was this. England had been alarmed at seeing Belgium offer its alliance to France. Like the Emperor and Prussia, she began to be afraid of a vivacious and contagious revolution which captivated both by its ardour and a character of human (more than national) generality, very contrary to the English genius. Burke, a talented, but passionate and venal Irishman, a pupil of the Jesuits of Saint Omer, vented, in parliament, a furious philippic against the Revolution, for which he was paid by his adversary Mr. Pitt. England did not attack France; but she abandoned Belgium to the Emperor, and then went to the other end of the world to seek a quarrel on the sea with Spain, our ally. Louis XVI. intimated to the Assembly that he was arming fourteen vessels.

Thereupon, there arose a long and complicated theoretical discussion on the general question,-to whom belonged the initiative of making war. Little or nothing was said on the particular question, which nevertheless commanded the other. Everybody seemed to avoid it-to be afraid of considering it.

SKETCH OF MIRABEAU.

333

Paris was not afraid of it, but considered it attentively. All the people perceived and said that if the king swayed the sword, the Revolution must perish. There were fifty thousand men at the Tuileries, in the Place Vendôme, and the Rue Saint Honoré, waiting with inexpressible anxiety, and greedily devouring the notes flung to them from the windows of the Assembly, to enable them to keep pace every moment with the progress of the discussion. They were all indignant and exasperated against Mirabeau. On his entering and leaving the Assembly, one showed him a rope, another a pair of pistols.

He testified much calmness. Even at moments when Barnave was occupying the tribune with his long orations, thinking the time had come to overthrow him, Mirabeau did not even listen, but went out to take a walk in the garden of the Tuileries amid the crowd, and paid his respects to the youthful and enthusiastic Madame de Staël, who was there also waiting with the people.

His courage did not make his cause the better. He triumphed in speaking on the theoretical question, on the natural association (in the great act of war) between thought and power, between the Assembly and the king. But all this metaphysical language could not disguise the situation of affairs.

His enemies took every unparliamentary means, akin to assassination, which might have caused him to be torn in pieces. During the night they caused an atrocious libel to be written, printed, and circulated. In the morning, on his way to the Assembly, Mirabeau heard on all sides the cry of "The discovery of the great treachery of Count de Mirabeau." The danger, as was always the case with him, inspired him admirably; he overwhelmed his enemies: "I knew well," cried he, "how short is the distance from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock," &c.

He thus triumphed on the personal question. And even on the question in debate, he made a skilful retreat; at the first opportunity afforded him by the proposal of a less startling formula, he turned about, yielded on the form but gained the substance. It was decided that the king had the right to make the preparations, to direct the forces as he would, that he proposed war to the Assembly, which was to decide on nothing that was not sanctioned by the king (May 22nd).

334

SYMPATHY WITH THE KING AND QUEEN.

On leaving the Assembly, Barnave, Duport, and Lameth, who were retiring in despair, were applauded and almost carried home by the people, who imagined they had gained the day. They had not the courage to tell them the truth. In reality the Court had the advantage.

It had just experienced on two occasions the power of Mirabeau, in April against it, and in May in its favour. On the latter occasion, he had made superhuman efforts, sacrificed his popularity, and risked his life. The queen granted him an interview, the only one, in all probability, that he ever had.

There was another weak point in this man which cannot be dissembled. A few proofs of confidence, doubtless exaggerated by the zeal of Lamarck, who wished to bring them together, excited the imagination of the great orator-a credulous being, as such men ever are. He attributed to the queen a superiority of genius and character of which she never gave any proof. On the other hand, he easily believed, in his pride and the sense of his superiority, that he whom nobody could resist would easily captivate the mind of a woman. He would much rather have been the minister of a queen than of a king-the minister, or rather the lover.

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The queen was then with the king at Saint Cloud. rounded by the national guard, generally disposed in their favour, they found themselves pretty free, in a sort of half captivity, since they used to go every day to take long walks, sometimes to the distance of several leagues, without guards. There were, however, many kind good-natured persons who could not bear the idea that a king and a queen should be the prisoners of their subjects. One day, in the afternoon, the queen heard a slight sound of lamentation in the solitary court of Saint Cloud; she raised the curtain and saw beneath her balcony about fifty persons, countrywomen, priests, and old chevaliers of Saint Louis, who were silently weeping and stifling their sobs.

Mirabeau could not be callous to such impressions. Having remained, in spite of all his vices, a man of ardent imagination and violent passion, he found some happiness in feeling himself the supporter, the defender, perhaps the deliverer of a handsome and captive queen. The mystery of the interview added to his