This nomination is often quoted as a proof of the high intelligence, and of the wisdom of our fathers, two qualities which, since that epoch, must have been constantly on the decline, if we are to believe the blind Pessimists.  Such an accusation imposed on me the duty of carrying the appreciation of this wisdom, of this intelligence that is held up against us, even to numerical correctness.  The following is the result:  the majority of the votes was 159; Bailly obtained 173; this was fourteen more than he required.  If fourteen votes had changed sides the result would have been different.  Was this an incident, I ask, to exclaim so much against?

Bailly showed himself deeply affected by this mark of the confidence with which he was regarded.  His sensibility, his gratitude, did not prevent him, however, from recording in his memoirs the following naive observation:  “I observed in the Assembly of the Electors a great dislike for literary men, and for the academicians.”

I recommend this remark to all studious men who, by circumstances or by a sense of duty, may be thrown into the whirlpool of politics.  Perhaps I may yield to the temptation of developing it, when I shall have to characterize Bailly’s connection with his co-laborers in the first municipality of Paris.

The great question on the verification of the powers was already strongly agitated, the day that Bailly and the other Deputies of Paris for the first time were able to go to Versailles; our academician had only spoken once in that majestic assembly, viz:  to induce the adoption of the method of voting by members being seated or standing,—­when, on the 3d of June, he was named Senior of the Deputies of the Communes (or Commons).  Formerly, the right of presiding in the third house of the kingdom belonged to the provost of the merchants.  Bailly in his diffidence thought that the assembly, in assigning the chair to him, had wished to compensate the capital for the loss of an old privilege.  This consideration induced him to accept of a duty that he thought above his powers,—­he who always depicted himself as timid to an extreme, and not possessing a facility of speaking.

Men’s minds were more animated, more ardent in 1789 than those would admit who always see in the present a faithful image of the past.  But calumny, that murderous arm of political party, already respected no position.  Knowledge, loyalty, virtue, did not suffice to shelter any one from its poisoned darts.  Bailly experienced it on the very day after his nomination to such an eminent post as President of the Communes.

On the 29th of May, the Communes had voted an address to the king on the constantly recurring difficulties that the nobility opposed to the union of the States General in one assembly.  In order to carry out this most solemn deliberation, Bailly solicited an audience, in which the moderate and respectful expression of the anxiety of six hundred loyal deputies was to be presented to the monarch.  In the midst of these strifes the Dauphin died.  Without taking the trouble to consult dates, the court party immediately represented Bailly as a stranger to the commonest proprieties, and totally deficient in feeling; he ought, they said, to have respected the most allowable of griefs; his importunities had been barbarous.