nor to a limited monarchy, but to anarchy; and he had discernment enough to dread that.  He therefore now sincerely desired to save the king’s life, and even what remained of his authority, especially if he could so order matters that their preservation should be seen to be his own work.  He was conscious also that he could reckon on many allies in any effort which he might make for the prevention of further outrages.  The more respectable portion of the Parisians viewed the recent outrages with disgust, sharpened by personal alarm.  The dominion of Santerre and his gangs of destitute desperadoes was manifestly fraught with destruction to themselves as well as to the king.  The greater part of the army under his command shared these feelings, and would gladly have followed him to Paris to crush the revolutionary clubs, and to inflict condign punishment on the authors and chief agents in the late insurrection.  If he had but had the skill to avail himself of this favorable state of feeling, there can be little doubt that it was in his power at this moment to have established the king in the full exercise of all the authority vested in him by the Constitution, or even to have induced the Assembly to enlarge that authority.  He so mismanaged matters that he only increased the king’s danger, and brought general contempt and imminent danger on himself likewise.  His enemies had more than once accused him of wishing to copy Cromwell.  His friends had boasted that he would emulate Monk.  But if he was too scrupulous for the audacious wickedness of the one, he proved himself equally devoid of the well-calculating shrewdness of the other.  If, subsequently, he had any reason to congratulate himself on the result of his conduct, it was that, like the stork in the fable, after be had thrust his head into the mouth of the wolf, he was allowed to draw it out again in safety.

Louis’s enemies had abundantly shown that they did not lack boldness.  If they were to be defeated, it could only be by action as bold as their own.  Unhappily, La Fayette’s courage had usually found vent rather in blustering words than in stout deeds; and those were the only weapons he could bring himself to employ now.  He resolved to remonstrate with the Assembly; but instead of bringing up his army, or even a detachment, to back his remonstrance, he came to Paris with a single aid-de-camp, and, on the 28th of June, presented himself at the bar of the Assembly and demanded an audience.  A fortnight before he had written a letter to the president, in which he had denounced alike the Jacobin leaders of the clubs and the Girondin ministers, and had called on the Assembly to suppress the clubs; a letter which had produced no effect except to unite the two parties against whom it was aimed more closely together, and also to give them a warning of his hostility to them, which, till he was in a position to show it by deeds, it would have been wiser to have avoided.