XVI., could speak to him for the first time of the sovereigns acting in concert? and against what, if not against the Revolution?  And how could the ministers and ambassadors of the Revolution have been ignorant of its existence?  Why had they concealed from the nation their knowledge, if they had known it?  There was, then, a double diplomacy, each striving to outwit the other.  The Austrian Alliance was, then, no dream of faction; there was either incompetence or treason in official diplomacy, perhaps both.  A projected congress was spoken of—­could it have any other object than that of imposing modifications on the constitution of France?—­And all felt indignant at the idea of ceding even one tittle of the constitution to the demand of monarchical Europe.

II.

It was whilst the public mind was thus agitated that the diplomatic committee presented, through the Girondist Gensonne, its report on the existing state of affairs with the emperor.  Gensonne, an advocate of Bordeaux, elected to the Legislative Assembly on the same day as Guadet and Vergniaud, his friends and countrymen, composed, with these deputies, that triumvirate of talent, opinion, and eloquence, afterwards termed the Gironde.  An obstinate and dialectic style of oratory, bitter and keen irony, were the characteristics of the talents of the Gironde; it did not carry away by its eloquence, it constrained; and its revolutionary passions were strong, yet under the control of reason.

Before entering the Assembly, he had been sent as a commissioner with Dumouriez, afterwards so celebrated, to study the state of the popular feeling in the department of the west, and to propose measures likely to tend to the pacification of these countries, then distracted by religious differences.  His clear and enlightened report had been in favour of tolerance and liberty—­those two topics of all consciences.  He was then, in common with the other Girondists, resolved to carry out the Revolution to its extreme and definite form—­a republic, without, however, too soon destroying the constitutional throne, provided the constitution was in the hands of his party.

The intimate friend of the minister Narbonne, his calumniators accused him of having sold himself to him.  Nothing, however, bears out this suspicion; for if the soul of the Girondists was not free from ambition and intrigue, their hands at least were pure from corruption.

Gensonne, in his report in the name of the diplomatic committee, asked two questions; first, what was our political situation with regard to the emperor; secondly, should his last office be regarded as an act of hostility; and in this case was it advisable to accelerate this inevitable rupture by commencing the attack.