the highest rank, and who makes of her secret and corrupt court the sanctuary of her pleasures and the focus of her vices, this prince, blinded on the one hand by the priests, and on the other by love, holds at random the loose reins of an empire which is escaping from his grasp.  France, exhausted of men, does not give to him, either in Maurepas, Necker, or Calonne, a minister capable of supporting him.  The aristocracy is barren, and produces nothing but to its shame; the government must be renewed in the holier and deeper fount of the nation; the time for a democracy is here,—­why delay it!  You are its men, its virtues, its characters, its intelligence.  The Revolution is behind you, it hails you, urges you onward, and would you surrender it to the first smile from the king because he has the condescension of a man of the people?  No:  Louis XVI., half dethroned by the nation, cannot love the nation that fetters him; he may feign to caress his chains, but all his thoughts are devoted to the idea of how he can spurn them.  His only resource at this moment is to protest his attachment to the Revolution, and to lull the ministers whom the Revolution empowers to watch over his intrigues.  But this pretence is the last and most dangerous of the conspiracies of the throne.  The constitution is the forfeiture of Louis XVI., and the patriot ministers are his superintendents.  Fallen greatness cannot love the cause of its decadence; no man likes his humiliation.  Trust in human nature, Roland—­that alone never deceives, and mistrust courts.  Your virtue is too elevated to see the snares which courtiers spread beneath your feet.”

XI.

Such language amazed Roland.  Brissot, Condorcet, Vergniaud, Gensonne, Guadet, and especially Buzot, the friend and most intimate confidant of Madame Roland, strengthened at their evening meetings the mistrust of the minister.  He armed himself with fresh distrust from their conversations, and entered the council with a more frowning brow and more resolute determination:  the king’s frankness disarmed him—­Dumouriez discouraged him by his gaiety—­power softened him by its influence.  He wavered between the two great difficulties of the moment, the double sanction required from the king for the decrees which were most repugnant to his heart and conscience, the decree against the emigrants, and the decree against the nonjuring priests; and he wavered as to war.

During this tergiversation of Roland and his colleagues, Dumouriez acquired the favour of the king and the people, the secret of his conduct being comprised in what he had said a short time before to M. de Montmorin, in a secret conversation he had with that minister.  “If I were king of France, I would disconcert all parties by placing myself at the head of the Revolution.”