Whilst the captive king kept up a twofold understanding with his emigrant brothers to learn the strength and inclination of foreign powers, and with Barnave to attempt the conquest of the Assembly, the Assembly itself lost its power; and the spirit of the Revolution, quitting the place in which it had no longer any hopes, went to excite the clubs and municipalities, and bestow its energies on the elections.  The Assembly had committed the fault of declaring its members not re-eligible for the new legislature.  This act of renunciation of itself, which resembled the heroism of disinterestedness, was in reality the sacrifice of the country; it was the ostracism of superior power, and an assurance of triumph to mediocrity.  A nation how rich soever in genius and virtue, never possesses more than a definite number of great citizens.  Nature is chary of superiority.  The social conditions necessary to form a public man are rarely in combination.  Intelligence, clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—­all this is seldom united in one individual.  An entire society is not decapitated with impunity.  Nations are like their soil:  after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive.  The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed the form of a vengeance.  The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave’s grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues.  The republican party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists.  The constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which they expected their successors would present.  It was a vote of contending passions, all evil, and which could only produce a loss to all parties.  The king alone was averse from this measure.  He perceived repentance in the National Assembly—­he was in communication with its leading members—­he had the key to many consciences.  A new nation, unknown and impatient, was about to present it before him in a new Assembly.  The reports of the press, the clubs, and places of popular bruit told him, but too plainly, on what men the excited people would bestow their confidence.  He preferred known, exhausted, opponents, men partly gained over, to new and ardent enemies who would surpass in exactions those they replaced.  To them there only remained his throne to overthrow,—­to him there was left to yield but his life.

XX.