was doomed to learn this when too late; and the Girondists were to learn it after him.  The plan was thus arranged:—­Malouet was to ascend the tribune, and in a vehement but well-reasoned discourse was to attack all the errors of the constitution; he was to demonstrate that if these vices were not amended by the Assembly before the constitution itself should be presented to the king and the people to swear to, it would be anarchy registered by an oath.  The three hundred members of the cote droit were to support the charges of their spokesman by vehement plaudits.  Barnave was then to demand a reply, and in a discourse, apparently much excited, was to have vindicated the constitution from the invectives of Malouet, at the same time conceding that as this constitution was suddenly produced by the enthusiastic ardour of the Revolution, and under the impulse of desperately contending circumstances, there might be some imperfections in a certain portion of the construction; that the grave consideration and wisdom of the Assembly might remedy these errors before it dissolved; and that, amongst other ameliorations which might be applied to this work, they might retouch two or three articles in which the power assigned to the executive authority and the legislative authority had been ill defined, so as to restore to the executive power the independence and scope indispensable to their existence.  The friends of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport, as well as all the members of the left, would have clamorously supported the speaker, except Robespierre, Petion, Buzot, and the republicans.  A commission would have been instantly named for the special revision of the articles alluded to.  This commission would have made its report before the end of the meeting of the chambers; and the three hundred votes of Malouet, united to the constitutional votes of Barnave, would have assured to the monarchical amendments the majority which was to restore royalty.

XIX.

But the members of the right refused to give their unanimous concurrence to this plan.  “To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt.  To unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves.  To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king even to gratitude towards a member of a faction.  Their hopes had not fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a character in a comedy of startled revolutionists.  Their hopes were not in any amelioration of present ill, but in its progress towards worse.  The very excess of disorder would punish disorder itself.  The king was at the Tuileries, but royalty was not there—­it was at Coblentz, it was on all the thrones of Europe.  Monarchies were all in connection; they knew very well how to restore the French monarchy without the fellowship of those who had overturned it.”

Thus reasoned the members of the right.  Feelings and resentments closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand of its friends than that of its enemies.  The plan was abortive.