to the Girondins, 'if you
cared less for personal matters and attended only to public interests.'
Years ago, in his _eloge_ on L'Hopital, he had praised the famous
Chancellor for incurring the hostility of both of the two envenomed
factions, the League and the Huguenots, and for disregarding the
approbation or disapprobation of the people. 'What operation,' he asked,
'capable of producing any durable good, can be understood by the people?
How should they know to what extent good is possible? How judge of the
means of producing it? It must ever be easier for a charlatan to mislead
the people, than for a man of genius to save it.'[27] Remembering this
law, he never lost patience. He was cool and intrepid, if his
intrepidity was of the logical sort rather than physical; and he was
steadfast to one or two simple aims, if he was on some occasions too
rapid in changing his attitude as to special measures. He was never
afraid of the spectre, as the incompetent revolutionist is. On the
contrary, he understood its whole internal history; he knew what had
raised it, what passion and what weakness gave to it substance, and he
knew that presently reason would banish it and restore men to a right
mind. The scientific spirit implanted in such a character as
Condorcet's, and made robust by social meditation, builds up an
impregnable fortitude in the face of incessant rebuffs and
discouragements. Let us then picture Condorcet as surveying the terrific
welter from the summer of 1789 to the summer of 1793, from the taking of
the Bastille to the fall of the Girondins, with something of the
firmness and self-possession of a Roman Cato.

After the flight of the king in June, and his return in what was
virtually captivity to Paris, Condorcet was one of the party, very small
in numbers and entirely discountenanced by public opinion, then passing
through the monarchical and constitutional stage, who boldly gave up the
idea of a monarchy and proclaimed the idea of a republic. In July (1791)
he published a piece strongly arguing for a negative answer to the
question whether a king is necessary for the preservation of
liberty.[28] In one sense, this composition is favourable to Condorcet's
foresight; it was not every one who saw with him that the destruction of
the monarchy was inevitable after the royal flight. This want of
preparation in the public mind for every great change as it came, is one
of the most striking circumstances of the Revoluti