of her argument was an explanation that such
an appointment would be a violation of the Constitution, which forbade the
king to create any new ministerial office. And the count deserves to have
it mentioned to his honor that the rebuff which he had received in no
degree cooled his attachment to the king and queen, or the zeal with which
he labored for their service.

We have no information how far the new minister coincided in a step which
the queen took in the course of November, and which is commonly ascribed
to her judgment alone. Before its dissolution, the late Assembly had
broken up the National Guard of Paris into separate legions, and had
suppressed the appointment of commander-in-chief of the forces; and La
Fayette, whom this measure had left without employment, feeling keenly the
diminution of his importance, and instigated by the restlessness common to
men of moderate capacity, conceived the hope of succeeding Bailly in the
mayoralty of Paris, which that magistrate was on the point of resigning.

It had become a post of great consequence, since the extent to which the
authority of the crown had been pared away tended to make the mayor the
absolute dictator of the capital; and consequently the Jacobins were
anxious to secure the office for one of the extreme Revolutionary party,
and set up Petion as a rival candidate. The election belonged to the
citizens, and, as in the city the two parties possessed almost equal
strength, it was soon seen that the court, which had by no means lost its
influence among the tradesmen and shop-keepers, had the power of deciding
the contest in favor of the candidate for whom it should pronounce, Marie
Antoinette declared for Petion. She knew him to be a Jacobin,[5] but he
was so devoid of any reputation for ability that she did not fear him.
Nor, except that he had behaved with boorish disrespect and ill-manners
during their melancholy return from Varennes, had she any reason for
suspecting him of any special enmity to the king.

But La Fayette, though always loud in his professions of loyalty, had
never lost an opportunity of offering personal insults to both the king
and herself. It was to his shameful neglect (to put his conduct in the
most favorable light) that she justly attributed the danger to which she
had been exposed at Versailles, and the compulsion which had been put upon
the king to take up his residence in Paris; and, not to mention a constant
series of petty insu