Beside these official councillors, certain constituents not in the Assembly, especially the Lameths, Duport, and Barnave, were consulted by the king.  Barnave had remained in Paris some months after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.  He redeemed by sincere devotion to the monarchy the blows he had previously dealt upon it.  He had measured with an eye of judgment, the rapid declivity down which the love of popular favour had impelled him.  Like Mirabeau, he wished to pause when it was too late.  Henceforth, remaining on the brink of events, he was besieged with terror and remorse.  If his intrepid heart did not tremble for himself, the sympathy he experienced for the queen and royal family urged him to give the king advice which had but one fault,—­it was impossible now to follow it.

These consultations, held at Adrien Duport’s, the friend of Barnave and the oracle of the party, only served to embarrass the mind of the king with another element of hesitation.  La Fayette and his friends also added their imperious counsel.  La Fayette could not believe that he was supplanted.  The national guard, which yet remained attached to him, still credited his omnipotence,—­all these men and all these parties lent M. de Narbonne secret support.  A courtier in the eyes of the court, an aristocrat in the eyes of the nobility, a soldier in the eyes of the army, one of the people in the eyes of the people, irresistible in the eyes of the women, he was the minister of public hope.  The Girondists alone had an arriere-pensee in their apparent favour towards him.  They elevated him to make his fall the more conspicuous:  M. de Narbonne was to them but the hand which prepared the way for their advent.

IV.

Scarcely had he taken his place in the cabinet, than this young minister displayed all the activity, frankness, and grace of his character in the discussion of affairs, and his intercourse with the Assembly.  He employed the system of confidence, and surprised the Assembly by his abandon, and these austere and suspicious men, who had hitherto seen nothing but deceit in the language of ministers, now yielded to the charm of his speeches.  He addressed them, not in the official and cold language of diplomacy, but in the open and cordial tone of a patriot.  He brought the dignity of his office to the tribune; he generously assumed all responsibility, and he professed the most cherished principles of the people with a sincerity that precluded the possibility of suspicion.  He openly disclosed his projects, and the energy of his mind communicated itself to those men who were the most difficult to be won over.  The nation too saw with delight an aristocrate so well adapt himself to their costume, their principles, and their passions.  The ardour of his patriotism did not suffer the impulse, that confounded in him the king and the people, to slacken; and in the course of his short administration