the factions; they bribed the royalist press, and found their way into the hands of the orators and writers apparently most inveterate against the court; and many false manoeuvres, to which the people were urged, arose from no other source.  There was a ministry of corruption, over which perfidy presided.  Many obtained from this source, under pretence of aiding the court, the power of moderating or betraying the people; then fearing lest their treachery should be discovered, they hid it by a second betrayal, and turned against the king his own motions.  Danton was of this number.  Sometimes, through motives of charity or peace, the king gave a monthly sum to be distributed amongst the national guard, and the quartiers in which insurrection was most to be apprehended.  M. de La Fayette, and Petion himself, often drew money from this source.  Thus the king could, by employing those means, ensure the election, and by joining the constitutionalist party determine the choice of Paris in favour of M. de La Fayette.  M. de La Fayette was one of the first originators of this revolution which humbled the throne; his name was associated with every humiliation of the court, with all the resentment of the queen, all the terrors of the king; he had been first their dread, then their protector, and, lastly, their guardian:  could he be now their hope?  Would not this post of mayor of Paris, this vast, civil, and popular dignity, after this long-armed dictatorship in the capital, be to La Fayette but a second stepping-stone that would raise him higher than the throne, and cast the king and constitution into the shade?  This man, with his theoretically liberal ideas, was well-intentioned, and wished rather to dominate than to reign; but could any reliance be placed on these good intentions that had been so often overcome?  Was it not full of these good intentions that he had usurped the command of the civic force—­captured the Bastille with the insurgent Gardes Francaises—­marched to Versailles at the head of the populace of Paris—­suffered the chateau to be forced on the 6th of October—­arrested the royal family at Varennes, and retained the king a prisoner in his own palace?  Would he now resist should the people again command him?  Would he abandon the role of the French Washington when he had half fulfilled it?  The human heart is so constituted that we rather prefer to cast ourselves into the power of those who would destroy us than seek safety from those who humiliate us.  La Fayette humiliated the king, and more especially the queen.

A respectful independence was the habitual expression of La Fayette’s countenance in presence of Marie Antoinette.  There was perceptible in the general’s attitude, it was to be seen in his words, distinguishable in his accent, beneath the cold and polished forms of the courtier, the inflexibility of the citizen.  The queen preferred the factions.  She thus plainly spoke to her confidents.  “M. de La Fayette,” she said, “will not be the mayor of Paris in order that he may the sooner become the maire du Palais.  Petion is a Jacobin, a republican; but he is a fool, incapable of ever becoming the leader of a party:  he would be a nullity as maire, and, besides, the very interest he knows we should take in his nomination might bind him to the king.”