all men was most fitted to plunge the people into the last degree of excess.  His affected virtue served only to cloak violence, and to cover with an hypocritical appearance of legality the outbreaks he dared not punish; and had a representative of anarchy been sought to be placed at the head of the commune of Paris, it could have found no fitter type than Petion.  His paternal reprimands to the people were but promises of impunity.  The public force always arrived too late to punish; excuse was always to be found for sedition, amnesty for crime.  The people felt that their magistrate was their accomplice and their slave, and yet whilst they despised they loved him.

XVII.

“This fete that is preparing for these soldiers,” wrote Chenier, “is attributed to enthusiasm.  For my part, I confess I do not perceive this enthusiasm.  I see a few men who create a degree of agitation, but the rest are alarmed or indifferent.  We are told that the national honour is interested in this reparation,—­I can scarcely comprehend this; for, either the national guards of Metz, who put down the revolt of Nancy, are enemies of the public weal, or the soldiers of Chateauvieux are assassins:  there is no medium.  How, then, is the honour of Paris interested in feting the murderers of our brothers?  Other profound politicians say, this fete will humiliate those who have sought to fetter the nation.  What! in order to humiliate, according to their judgment, a bad government, it is necessary to invent extravagances capable of destroying every species of government—­recompense rebellion against the laws—­crown foreign satellites for having shot French citizens in an emeute.  It is said, that in every place where this procession passes, the statues will be veiled:—­Ah! they will do well to veil the whole city, if this hideous orgy takes place; but it is not alone the statues of despots that should be veiled, but the face of every good citizen.  It will be the duty of every youth in the kingdom, of every national guard in the kingdom to assume mourning on the day when the murder of their brothers confers a title of glory on foreign and seditious soldiers; it is the eyes of the army that should be veiled, that they may not behold the reward of insubordination and revolt; it is the National Assembly—­the king—­the administrators—­the country—­that should veil their faces, in order that they may not become complaisant or silent witnesses of the outrages offered to the authorities and the country.  The book of the law must be covered, when those who have torn and stained its pages by musket-balls and sabre-cuts receive the civic honours.  Citizens of Paris, honest yet weak men, there is not one of you who, when he interrogates his own heart, does not feel how much the country—­how much he its child—­are insulted by these outrages offered to the laws,—­to those who execute them, and those who are for them.