of the National Assembly.  You are on the brink of ruin; hasten to provide for your safety.  Instantly choose a dictator; let your choice fall on the citizen who has up to the present displayed most zeal, activity, and intelligence; and do all he bids you do to strike at your foes; this is the time to lop off the heads of Bailly, La Fayette, all the scoundrels of the staff, all the traitors of the Assembly.  A tribune, a military tribune, or you are lost without hope.  At present I have done all that was in the power of man to save you.  If you neglect this last piece of advice, I have no more to say to you, and take my farewell of you for ever.  Louis XVI., at the head of his satellites, will besiege you in Paris, and the friend of the people will have a burning pile (four ardent) for his tomb, but his last sigh shall be for his country, for liberty, and for you.”

XVIII.

The members of the constitutional party felt it their duty to attend the sitting of the Jacobins on the 22d, in order to moderate its ardour.  Barnave, Sieyes, and La Fayette also appeared there, and took the oath of fidelity to the nation.  Camille Desmoulins thus relates the results of this sitting: 

“Whilst the National Assembly was decreeing, decreeing, decreeing, the people were acting.  I went to the Jacobins, and on the Quai Voltaire I met La Fayette.  Barnave’s words had begun to turn the current of popular opinion, and some voices cried ‘Vive La Fayette.’  He had reviewed the battalions on the quay.  Convinced of the necessity of rallying round a chief, I yielded to the impulse that drew me towards the white horse.  ‘Monsieur de La Fayette,’ said I to him in the midst of the crowd, ’for more than a year I have constantly spoken ill of you, this is the moment to convict me of falsehood.  Prove that I am a calumniator, render me execrable, cover me with infamy, and save the state.’  I spoke with the utmost warmth, whilst he pressed my hand.  ’I have always recognised you as a good citizen,’ returned he; ’you will see that you have been deceived; our common oath is to live free, or to die—­all goes well—­there’s but one feeling amongst the National Assembly—­the common danger has united all parties.’  ‘But why,’ I inquired, ’does your Assembly affect to speak of the carrying off (enlevement) of the king in all its decrees, when the king himself writes that he escaped of his own free will? what baseness, or what treason, in the Assembly to employ such language, when surrounded by three millions of bayonets.’  ’The word carrying off is a mistake in dictation, that the Assembly will correct,’ replied La Fayette; then he added, ’this conduct of the king is infamous.’  La Fayette repeated this several times, and shook me heartily by the hand.  I left him, reflecting that possibly the vast field that the king’s flight opened to his ambition, might bring him back to the party of the people.  I arrived at the Jacobins, striving to believe the sincerity of his demonstrations, of his patriotism, and friendship; and to persuade myself of this, which, in spite of all my efforts, escaped by a thousand recollections, and a thousand issues.”