have come
so far as to foresee the moment when the legislative corps will succeed
this convention; and, unless foreign powers interfere, I hope that
within four months your friend will have resumed the life of a private
and quiet citizen. The rage of parties, even among the patriots, is gone
as far as it is possible, short of bloodshed; but, although hatreds are
far from subsiding, matters do not appear so much disposed as they
formerly were towards collision among the supporters of the popular
cause. I myself am exposed to the envy and attacks of all parties--for
this simple reason, that whoever acts or means wrong finds me an
insuperable obstacle. And there appears a kind of phenomenon in my
situation--all parties against me, and a national popularity, which, in
spite of every effort, has remained unchanged.... Given up to all the
madness of license, faction, and popular rage, I stood alone in defence
of the law, and turned the tide into the constitutional channel."

A little later, Lafayette wrote: "The refugees hovering about the
frontiers; intrigues in most of the despotic and aristocratic cabinets;
our regular army divided into tory officers and undisciplined soldiers;
licentiousness among the people not easily repressed; the capital, that
gives the tone to the empire, tossed about by anti-revolutionary or
factious parties; the assembly fatigued by hard labor, and very
unmanageable--cause me sometimes to be filled with alarm."

These few sentences lift the curtain slightly from the terrible drama,
then in cautious rehearsal, which was soon openly acted before the great
audience of the nations. In place of constitutional order, there was the
anarchy of faction in the French capital and throughout the provinces.
The club of forty gentlemen and men of letters, who met in the hall of
the Jacobin monks long before the states-general convened, had now grown
up to a vast and popular association known as the Jacobin club. They
were the avowed and determined adversaries of monarchy and all
aristocratic titles and privileges, and contemners of Christianity; and
they had started a journal for the dissemination of their
ultra-democratic and irreligious doctrines, having for its
watchwords--_Liberty and Equality_. It was puissant in spreading the
spirit of revolt and disaffection to the king, and the greatest license
began to prevail among the people. The king and his family were insulted
in public. Lafayette, disgusted with