pithy saying that "he ought to have lived two years longer, or died two
years earlier," we can hardly agree with them. La Marck, as has been seen,
even when first opening the negotiation for his connection with the court,
doubted whether he would be able to undo the mischief which he had
acquiesced in, measures not of reform nor of reconstruction, but of total
abolition and destruction, are in their very nature irrevocable and
irremediable. The nobility was gone; he had not resisted its suppression.
The Church was gone; he had himself been among the foremost of its
assailants. How, even if he had wished it, could he have undone these
acts? and if he could not, how, without those indispensable pillars and
supports, could any monarchy endure? That he was now fully alive to the
magnitude of the dangers which encompassed both throne and people, and
that he would have labored vigorously to avert them, we may do him the
justice to believe. But it seems not so probable that he would have
succeeded, as that he would have added one more to the list of these
politicians who, having allowed their own selfish aims to carry them
beyond the limits of prudence and justice, have afterward found it
impossible to retrace their steps, but have learned to their shame and
sorrow that their rashness has but led to the disappointment of their
hopes, the permanent downfall of their own reputations, and the ruin of
what they would gladly have defended and preserved. And, on the whole, it
is well that from time to time such lessons should be impressed upon the
world. It is well that men of lofty genius and pure patriotism should
learn, equally with the most shallow empiric or the most self-seeking
demagogue, that false steps in politics can rarely be retraced; that
concessions once made can seldom, if ever, be recalled, but are usually
the stepping-stones to others still more extensive; that what it would
have been easy to preserve, it is commonly impossible to repair or to
restore.

He had been laid in the grave only a fortnight, when, as if on purpose to
show how utterly defenseless the king now was, the Jacobins excited the
mob and the assembly to inflict greater insults on him than had been
offered even by the attack on Versailles, or by any previous vote. As
Easter, which was unusually late this year, approached, Louis became
anxious to spend a short time in tranquillity and holy meditation; and,
since the tumultuousness of the city was not