Petion, scarcely elected, went in triumph to the Jacobins, and was thus carried in the arms of patriots into the tribune.  Old Dusault, who occupied it at the moment, stammered out a few words, interrupted by his sobs, in honour of his pupil.  “I look on M. Petion,” said he, “as my son; it is very bold no doubt.”  Petion overcome, embraced the old man with ardour; the tribunes applauded and wept.

The other nominations were made in the same spirit.  Manuel[11] was named procureur de la commune;—­Danton, his deputy, which was his first step in popularity; he did not owe it, like Petion, to the public esteem, but to his own intriguing.  He was appointed in spite of his reputation.  The people are apt to excuse the vices they find useful.

The nomination of Petion to the office of maire of Paris gave the Girondists a constant point d’appui in the capital.  Paris, as well as the Assembly, escaped from the king’s hands.  The work of the Constituent Assembly crumbled away in three months.  The wheels gave way before they were set in motion.  All presaged an approaching collision between the executive power and the power of the Assembly.  Whence arose this sudden decomposition?  It is now the moment for throwing a glance over this labour of the Constituent Assembly and its framers.

BOOK VII.

I.

The Constituent Assembly had abdicated in a storm.

This assembly had consisted of the most imposing body of men that had ever represented, not only France, but the human race.  It was in fact the oecumenical council of modern reason and philosophy.  Nature seemed to have created expressly, and the different orders of society to have reserved, for this work, the geniuses, characters, and even vices most requisite to give to this focus of the lights of the age the greatness, eclat, and movement of a fire destined to consume the remnants of an old society, and to illumine a new one.  There were sages, like Bailly and Mounier; thinkers, like Sieyes; factious partisans, like Barnave; statesmen like Talleyrand; men, epochs, like Mirabeau, and men, principles like Robespierre.  Each cause was personified by what most distinguished each party.  The very victims were illustrious.  Cazales, Malouet, Maury, sounded forth in bursts of grief and eloquence the successive falls of the throne, the aristocracy, and the clergy.  This active centre of the thoughts of a century, was sustained during the whole time by the storm of perpetual political conflict.  Whilst they were deliberating within, the people were acting without, and struck at the doors.  These twenty-six months of consultations were one uninterrupted sedition.  Scarcely had one institution crumbled to pieces in the tribune, than the nation swept it away to clear the space for another institution.  The anger of the people was