render government easy to ourselves.  His nature is so great that the throne has been unable to corrupt it, and he is equally remote from the silly brute which has been held up to the laughter of the people as from the sensitive and highly accomplished man his courtiers pretend to adore in him; his mind, without being superior, is expansive and reflecting; in a humble position his abilities would have provided for him; he has a general and occasionally sound knowledge, knows the details of business, and acts towards men with that simple but persuasive ability which gives kings the precocious necessity of governing their impressions; his prodigious memory always recalls to him at the right time things, names, and faces; he likes work, and reads every thing; he is never idle for a moment; a tender parent, a model of a husband:  chaste in feeling, he has done away with all those scandals which disgraced the courts of his predecessors; he loves none but the queen, and his condescension, which is occasionally injurious to his politics, is at least a weakness ‘which leans to virtue’s side.’  Had he been born two centuries earlier his peaceable reign would have been counted amongst the number of happy years of the monarchy.  Circumstances appear to have influenced his mind.  The Revolution has convinced him of its necessity, and we must convince him of its possibility.  In our hands the king may better serve it than any other citizen in the kingdom; by enlightening this prince we may be faithful alike to his interests and those of the nation—­the king and Revolution must be with us as one.”

X.

Thus said Roland in the first dazzling of power; his wife listened with a smile of incredulity on her lips.  Her keener glance had at the instant measured a career more vast and a termination more decisive than the timid and transitory compromise between a degraded royalty and an imperfect revolution.  It would have cost her too much to renounce the ideal of her ardent soul; all her wishes tended to a republic; all her exertions, all her words, all her aspirations, were destined, unconsciously to herself, to urge thither her husband and his associates.

“Mistrust every man’s perfidy, and more especially your own virtue,” was her reply to the weak and vain Roland.  “You see in this world but courts, where all is unreal, and where the most polished surfaces conceal the most sinister combinations.  You are only an honest countryman wandering amongst a crowd of courtiers,—­virtue in danger amidst a myriad of vices:  they speak our language, and we do not know theirs.  Would it be possible that they should not deceive us?  Louis XVI., of a degenerate race, without elevation of mind, or energy of will, allowed himself to be enthralled early in life by religious prejudices, which have even lessened his intellect; fascinated by a giddy queen, who unites to Austrian insolence the enchantment of beauty and