_cote droit_; were the texts of the debates. Of all the passions of
the people, there hatred was the most flattered; they made it suspicious
in order to subject it. Convinced that all was conspiring against
it,--king, queen, court, ministers, authorities, foreign powers,--it
threw itself headlong into the arms of its defenders. The most eloquent
in its eyes was he who inspired it with most dread--it had a parching
thirst for denunciations, and they were lavished on it with prodigal
hand. It was thus that Barnave, the Lameths, then Danton, Marat,
Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Petion, Robespierre, had acquired their
authority over the people. These names had increased in reputation as
the anger of the people grew hotter; they cherished their wrath in order
to retain their greatness. The nightly sittings of the Jacobins and the
Cordeliers frequently stifled the echo of the sittings of the National
Assembly: the minority, beaten at the Manege, came to protest, accuse,
threaten at the Jacobins.

Mirabeau himself, accused by Lameth on the subject of the law of
emigration, came a few days before his death to listen face to face to
the invectives of his denouncer, and had not disdained to justify
himself. The clubs were the exterior strength, where the factious of the
assembly gave the support of their names in order to intimidate the
national representation. The national representation had only the laws;
the club had the people, sedition, and even the army.

XX.

This expression of public opinion, thus organised into a permanent
association at every point in the empire, gave an electric shock which
nothing could resist. A motion made in Paris was echoed from club to
club to the extremest provinces. The same spark lighted at once the same
passion in millions of souls. All the societies corresponded with one
another and with the mother society. The impulse was communicated and
the response was felt every day. It was the government of factions
enfolding in their nets the government of the law; but the law was mute
and invisible, whilst faction was erect and eloquent. Let us imagine one
of these sittings, at which the citizens, already agitated by the stormy
air of the period, took their places at the close of day in one of those
naves recently devoted to another worship. Some candles, brought by the
affiliated, scarcely lighted up the gloomy place; naked walls, wooden
benches, a tribune instead of an altar. Around this tribune