are rather my enemies who say so,” replied La Fayette:  “if I had proofs against you I should already have arrested you.  I have none, but I am seeking for them.”  The Duc d’Orleans went.  Nine months had passed away since his return.  The Constituent Assembly had left, without any other defence than anarchy, the constitution it had so lately voted.  Disorder prevailed throughout the kingdom:  the first acts of the Legislative Assembly announced the hesitation of a people which halts on a declivity, but is doomed to descend to the very bottom.

IX.

The Girondists, at the first step going a-head of the Barnaves and Lameths, showed a disposition to push France, all unprepared, into a republic.  The Duc d’Orleans, whose long residence in England had allowed him to reflect at a distance from the attractions of events and factions, felt his Bourbon blood rise within him.  He did not cease to be a patriot, but he understood that the safety of the country on the brink of a war was not in the destruction of the executive power.  Unquestionably pity for the king and queen awakened in a heart in which hatred had not stifled every generous feeling.  He felt himself too much avenged by the days of 5th and 6th October, by the humiliation of the king before the Assembly, by the daily insults of the populace under the windows of Marie Antoinette, and by the fearful nights of this family, whose palace was but a prison; and perhaps also he feared for himself the ingratitude of revolutions.

He had gone to England on compulsion, and had remained there under the idea, which was perfectly just, that his name might be used as a pretext for agitation in Paris.  Laclos had gone to him in London from time to time to try again to tempt the exile’s ambition, and make him ashamed of a deference for La Fayette, which France took to be cowardice.  The prince’s pride was roused at this, and he threatened to return; but the representations of M. de la Luzerne, minister of France in England, those of M. de Boinville, one of La Fayette’s aides-de-camp, and his own reflections, had prevailed over the incitements of Laclos.  Proof of this is found in a note of M. de la Luzerne’s, found in an iron chest amongst the king’s secret papers.  “I attest,” says M. de la Luzerne, “that I have presented to M. the Duc d’Orleans, M. de Boinville, aide-de-camp of M. de La Fayette, that M. de Boinville declared to the Duc d’Orleans that they were very uneasy as to the troubles which might at this moment be excited in Paris by malcontents, who would not scruple to make use of his name to disturb the capital, and perhaps the kingdom; and he was urged on these grounds to protract the time of his departure.  The Duc d’Orleans, unwilling in any way to afford plea or pretext for any disturbance of public tranquillity, consented to delay his return.”

X.