XVIII.

Robespierre, who had often struggled against Mirabeau with Duport, the Lameths, and Barnave, began to separate himself from them as soon as they appeared to predominate in the Assembly.  He formed, with Petion and some others of small note, a small band of opposition, radically democratic, who encouraged the Jacobins without, and menaced Barnave and the Lameths whenever they ventured to pause.  Petion and Robespierre in the Assembly, Brissot and Danton at the Jacobin Club, formed the nucleus of the new party which was destined to accelerate the movement and speedily to convert it into convulsions and catastrophes.

Petion was a popular Lafayette:  popularity was his aim, and he acquired it earlier than Robespierre.  A barrister without talent but upright, he had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man; his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain amount of authority in the Assembly, where he was listened to as the significant echo of the will out of doors.  Robespierre affected to respect him.

XIX.

The constitution was completed, the regal power was but a mere name, the king was but the executive of the orders of the national representation, his ministers only responsible hostages in the hands of the Assembly.  The vices of this constitution were evident before it was entirely finished.  Voted in the rage of parties, it was not a constitution, it was a vengeance of the people against the monarchy, the throne only existing as the substitute of a unique power which was every where instituted, but which no one yet dared to name.  The people, parties, trembled lest on removing the throne they should behold an abyss in which the nation would be engulphed:  it was thus tacitly agreed to respect its forms, though they daily despoiled and insulted the unfortunate monarch whom they kept chained to it.

Things were at that point where they have no possible termination except in a catastrophe.  The army, without discipline, added but another element to the popular ferment:  forsaken by its officers, who emigrated in masses, the subalterns seized upon democracy and propagated it in their ranks.  Affiliated in every garrison with the Jacobin Club, they received from it their orders, and made of their troops soldiers of anarchy, accomplices of faction.  The people to whom they had cast as a prey the feudal rights of the nobility and the tithes of the clergy, feared to have wrested from it what it held with disquietude, and saw in every direction plots which it anticipated by crimes.  The sudden burst of liberty, for which it was not prepared, agitated without strengthening it:  it evinced all the vices of enfranchised men