Liberty. Moderation has become a crime." After the 7th of October,
Mirabeau says to the Comte de la Marck:

"If you have any influence with the King or the Queen, persuade them
that they and France are lost if the royal family does not leave Paris.
I am busy with a plan for getting them away."

He prefers everything to the present situation, "even civil war;"
for "war, at least, invigorates the soul," while here, "under the
dictatorship of demagogues, we are being drowned in slime." Given up
to itself, Paris, in three months, "will certainly be a hospital, and,
perhaps, a theater of horrors." Against the rabble and its leaders, it
is essential that the King should at once coalesce "with his people,"
that he should go to Rouen, appeal to the provinces, provide a Centre
for public opinion, and, if necessary, resort to armed resistance.
Malouet, on his side, declares that "the Revolution, since the 5th of
October, "horrifies all sensible men, and every party, but that it
is complete and irresistible." Thus the three best minds that are
associated with the Revolution--those whose verified prophecies attest
genius or good sense; the only ones who, for two or three years, and
from week to week, have always predicted wisely, and who have employed
reason in their demonstrations--these three, Mallet du Pan, Mirabeau,
Mabuet, agree in their estimate of the event, and in measuring its
consequences. The nation is gliding down a declivity, and no one
possesses the means or the force to arrest it. The King cannot do it:
"undecided and weak beyond all expression, his character resembles those
oiled ivory balls which one vainly strives to keep together."[1447] And
as for the Assembly, blinded, violated, and impelled on by the theory
it proclaims, and by the faction which supports it, each of its grand
decrees only renders its fall the more precipitate.

*****

[Footnote 1401: Bailly, "Memoires," II. 195, 242.]

[Footnote 1402: Elysee Loustalot, journalist, editor of the paper
"Revolutions de Paris," was a young lawyer who had shown a natural
genius for innovative journalism. He was to die already in 1790. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1403: Montjoie, ch. LXX, p. 65.]

[Footnote 1404: Bailly, II. 74, 174, 242, 261, 282, 345, 392.]

[Footnote 1405: Such as domiciliary visits and arrests apparently made
by lunatics. ("Archives de la Prefecture de Police de Paris.")--And
Montjoie, ch. LXX. p.67. Expedition of the National Guard against
i