The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one’s own Palace has become a sad fact, then?  Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality deliberates, proposes to petition or address; Sections respond with sullen brevity of negation.  Lafayette flings down his Commission; appears in civic pepper-and-salt frock; and cannot be flattered back again;—­not in less than three days; and by unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling to him, and declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free men kneeling here to the Statue of Liberty.  For the rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—­yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new quarters.  The King must keep his Easter in Paris:  meditating much on this singular posture of things:  but as good as determined now to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty.

Chapter 2.4.II.

Easter at Paris.

For above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has hovered a project of Flight before the royal mind; and ever and anon has been condensing itself into something like a purpose; but this or the other difficulty always vaporised it again.  It seems so full of risks, perhaps of civil war itself; above all, it cannot be done without effort.  Somnolent laziness will not serve:  to fly, if not in a leather vache, one must verily stir himself.  Better to adopt that Constitution of theirs; execute it so as to shew all men that it is inexecutable?  Better or not so good; surely it is easier.  To all difficulties you need only say, There is a lion in the path, behold your Constitution will not act!  For a somnolent person it requires no effort to counterfeit death,—­as Dame de Stael and Friends of Liberty can see the King’s Government long doing, faisant le mort.

Nay now, when desire whetted by difficulty has brought the matter to a head, and the royal mind no longer halts between two, what can come of it?  Grant that poor Louis were safe with Bouille, what on the whole could he look for there?  Exasperated Tickets of Entry answer, Much, all.  But cold Reason answers, Little almost nothing.  Is not loyalty a law of Nature? ask the Tickets of Entry.  Is not love of your King, and even death for him, the glory of all Frenchmen,—­except these few Democrats?  Let Democrat Constitution-builders see what they will do without their Keystone; and France rend its hair, having lost the Hereditary Representative!

Thus will King Louis fly; one sees not reasonably towards what.  As a maltreated Boy, shall we say, who, having a Stepmother, rushes sulky into the wide world; and will wring the paternal heart?—­Poor Louis escapes from known unsupportable evils, to an unknown mixture of good and evil, coloured by Hope.  He goes, as Rabelais did when dying, to seek a great May-be:  je vais chercher un grand Peut-etre!  As not only the sulky Boy but the wise grown Man is obliged to do, so often, in emergencies.