attempts by force, an assumption of royal dignity, repentance, weakness, terror, and flight,—­all were discussed, planned, decided on, prepared and abandoned, on the same day.  Women, so sublime in their devotion, are seldom capable of the continuous firmness of mind—­the imperturbability requisite for a political plan.  Their politics are in their heart, their passions trench so closely on their reason.  Of all the virtues which a throne requires they have but courage; often heroes, they are never statesmen.  The queen was another example of this:  she did the king incredible mischief.  With a mind infinitely superior, with more soul, more character than he, her superiority only served to inspire him with mischievous counsels.  She was at once the charm of his misfortunes and the genius of his destruction; she conducted him step by step to the scaffold, but she ascended it with him.

XV.

The right side in the National Assembly consisted of men, the natural opponents of the movement, the nobility and higher clergy.  All, however, were not of the same rank nor the same title.  Seditions are found amongst the lower rank, revolutions in the higher.  Seditions are but the angry workings of the people—­revolutions are the ideas of the epoch.  Ideas begin in the head of the nation.  The French Revolution was a generous thought of the aristocracy.  This thought fell into the hands of the people, who framed of it a weapon against the noblesse, the throne, and religion.  The philosophy of the saloons became revolt in the streets:  nevertheless all the great houses of the kingdom had given apostles to the first dogmata of the Revolution:  the States General, the ancient theatre of the importance and triumphs of the higher nobility, had tempted the ambition of their heirs, and they had marched in the van of the reformers. Esprit de corps could not restrain them when the question of uniting with the Tiers Etat had been invoked.  The Montmorencies, Noailles, La Rochefoucaulds, Clermont Tonnerres, Lally Tollendals, Virieux, d’Aiguillons, Lauzans, Montesquieus, Lameths, Mirabeaus, the Duc d’Orleans, first prince of the blood, the Count de Provence, brother of the king, king himself afterwards as Louis XVIII., had given an impulse to the boldest innovations.  They had each borrowed their momentary popularity from principles easier to enunciate than restrain, and that popularity had nearly forsaken them all.  So soon as these theorists of speculative revolution saw that they were carried away in the torrent, they attempted to ascend the stream from whose source they had started; some again surrounded the throne, others had emigrated after the days of the 5th and 6th of October.  Others, more firm, remained in their places in the National Assembly; they fought without a hope, but still defended a fallen cause, gloriously resolute to maintain at least a monarchical power, and abandoning to the people, without a struggle, the spoils of the nobility and the church.  Amongst these are Cazales, the Abbe Maury, Malouet, and Clermont Tonnerre:  they were the distinguished orators of this expiring party.