VIII.

Such was the meeting of Charenton, such were the unseen actors who were to set in motion a million of citizens.  Did Laclos and Sillery, who were about to seek a throne for the Duc d’Orleans their master, in the faubourgs, distribute his gold there?  It has been asserted and believed, but never proved, and yet their presence at this meeting is suspicious.  History has the right of suspecting without evidence, but never of accusing without proof.  The assassination of the king would give the crown, the next day, to the Duc d’Orleans; Louis XVI. might be assassinated by the weapon of some drunken man—­he was not.  This is the only justification of the Orleans’ faction.  Some of these men were disaffected, like Marat and Hebert; others, like Barbaroux, Sillery, Laclos, and Carra, were impatient malcontents; and others, like Santerre, were but citizens, whose love of liberty became fanaticism.  The conspirators concerted together, and disciplined and organised the city.  Individual and distorted passions kindled the mighty and virtuous love of the people for the triumph of democracy.  It is thus that in a conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they could not stain, its brightness.

Whilst the conspirators of Charenton distributed their roles and recruited their forces, the king trembled for his wife and children at the Tuileries.  “Who knows,” said he, to M. de Malesherbes, with a melancholy smile, “whether I shall behold the sun set to-morrow?”

Petion, by ordering the municipal forces and the national guards under his orders to resist, could have entirely put down the sedition.  The directory of the department presided over by the unfortunate Duc de la Rochefoucauld, summoned Petion in the most energetic terms to perform his duty.  Petion smiled, took all on himself, and justified the legality of the proposed meetings and the petitions presented en masse to the Assembly.

Vergniaud in the tribune repelled the alarm felt by the constitutionalists, as calumnies against the innocence of the people.  Condorcet laughed at the disquietude manifested by the ministers, and the demands for armed force they addressed to the Assembly.  “Is it not amusing,” said he, addressing his colleagues, “to see the executive power demanding the means of action from the legislators? let them save themselves, it is their trade.”  Thus derision was united to the plots against the unfortunate monarch; the legislators derided the power their hands had disarmed, and applauded the factious.

IX.