lard, affirmed long after
that all parties in the Revolution were honest, except the Royalists.
He meant that the Right alone did wrong with premeditation and design.
In the surprising revulsion that followed the return from Varennes,
and developed the Feuillants, it was in the power of the Conservatives
to give life to constitutional monarchy. That was the moment of their
defection. They would have given much to save an absolute king: they
deliberately abandoned the constitutional king to his fate.

The 1150 men who had been the first choice of France now pass out of
our sight. The 720 deputies of the Legislative Assembly were new and
generally obscure names. Nobles, clergy, conservatives did not
reappear, and their place was taken by the Feuillants, who, in the
former Assembly, would have belonged to the Left. The centre of
gravity shifted far in the revolutionary direction. The Constitution
was made. The discussion of principles was over, and the dispute was
not for doctrines but for power. The speakers have not the same
originality or force; they are not inventors in political science;
they are not the pioneers of mankind. In literary faculty, if not in
political, they surpass their predecessors, and are remembered for
their eloquence if not for statecraft.

Reinhard, a German traveller who fell in with a group of the new
deputies on their way to Paris, fell under their charm, and resolved
to cast his lot with a country about to be governed by such men.
Whilst he rose to be an ambassador and minister of foreign affairs,
his friends were cut off in their prime, for they were the deputies
who came from Bordeaux, and gave the name of their department to the
party of the Gironde. By their parliamentary talents they quickly
obtained the lead of the new Assembly; and as they had few ideas and
no tactics, they allowed Sieyes to direct their course.

Robespierre, through the Jacobin Club, which now recovered much of the
ground it had lost in July, became the manager of the Extreme Left,
which gradually separated from Brissot and the Girondins. The ministry
was in the hands of the Feuillants, who were guided by Lameth, while
Barnave was the secret adviser of the queen. She followed his counsels
with aversion and distrust, looking upon him as an enemy, and longing
to throw off the mask, and show him how he had been deceived. As she
could not understand how the same men who had depressed monarchy
desired to sustain it, she