You see, Gentlemen, that no trouble was required to show that the disinterestedness of Bailly was great, enlightened, dictated by virtue, and that it was at least equal to his other eminent qualities.  In the series of accusations that I have extracted from the pamphlets of that epoch, there is one, however, as to which, all things considered, I will not attempt to defend Bailly.  He accepted a livery from the city; on this point no blame was attached to him; but the colours of the livery were very gaudy.  Perhaps the inventors of these bright shades had imagined, that the insignia of the first magistrate of the metropolis, in a ceremony, in a crowd, should, like the light from a Pharos, strike even inattentive eyes.  But these explanations regard those who would make of Bailly a perfectly rational being, a man absolutely faultless; I, although his admirer, I resign myself to admit that in a laborious life, strewed with so many rocks, he committed the horrible crime, unpardonable let it be called, of having accepted from the Commune a livery of gaudy colours.

Bailly figured in the events of the month of October 1789, only by the unsuccessful efforts he made at Paris, to arrange with Lafayette how to prevent a great crowd of women from going to Versailles.  When this crowd, considerably increased, returned on the 6th October very tumultuously escorting the carriages of the royal family, Bailly harangued the king at the Barriere de la Conference.  Three days after, he also complimented the Queen at the Tuileries in the name of the Municipal Council.

On retiring from the National Assembly, which he then called a Cavern of Anthropophagi, Lally Tollendal published a letter in which he found bitter fault with Bailly on account of these discourses.  Lally was angry, recollecting that the day when the king reentered his capital as a prisoner, surrounded by a very disrespectful crowd, and preceded by the heads of his body-guards, had appeared to Bailly a fine day!

If the two heads had been in the procession, Bailly becomes inexcusable; but the two epochs, or rather hours (to speak more correctly), have been confounded; the wretched men, who after a conflict with the body-guard, brought their barbarous trophies to Paris, left Versailles in the morning; they were arrested and imprisoned, by order of the municipality, as soon as they had entered the barriers of the capital.  Thus the hideous circumstance reported by Lally was the dream of a wild imagination.

A GLANCE AT THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF BAILLY.

Bailly’s Memoirs have thus far served me as a guide and check; now that this resource fails me, let us refer to his posthumous work.

I could only consult those Memoirs as far as they related to the public or private life of our colleague.  Historians may consult them in a more general point of view.  They will find some valuable facts in them, related without prejudice; ample matter for new and fruitful reflections on the way in which revolutions are generated, increase, and lead to catastrophes.  Bailly is less positive, less absolute, less slashing, than the generality of his contemporaries, even respecting those events in which circumstances assigned to him the principal part to be acted; hence when he points out some low intrigue, in distinct and categorical terms, he inspires full confidence.