hy would undergo
radical constitutional changes. Of this every one was conscious except
the king and the nobility. They were struck with that blindness which
foreruns ruin. They constituted one party, and this party was the common
object of attack by two political and revolutionary divisions, the
Girondists and the Jacobins. The Gironde wished reform, a constitution,
a monarchy, but one limited and constitutional, equality in taxes. They
did not wish to destroy utterly, but they were willing to dislocate and
then readjust, the machinery of state. The Jacobins at first said much,
but proposed little. They aspired to the abolition of the throne and the
establishment of a republic; they wished to overthrow the altar; they
promised, vaguely, to wreak upon the rich and titled full revenge for
the wrongs of the poor and lowly. Every political and social dream which
had found expression for twenty years, every skeptical attack upon
things ancient and holy, found in this body of men a party and an
exponent. Up to a certain point both of these parties necessarily made
common war upon the old order of things. But, beyond that point, it was
equally certain that they would attack each other. The Girondists would
wish to stop, and the Jacobins would wish to go on.

During the session of this assembly the influence of Madame Roland on
men of all modes of thought became most marked. Her parlors were the
rendezvous of eminent men, and men destined to become eminent. It is
impossible to discover, from the carping records of that time, that she
asserted her powers by an unwomanly effort. Men felt in her presence
that they were before a great intellectual being--a creative and
inspiring mind--and it shone upon them without effort, like the sun.
Among these visitors was Maximilien Robespierre, who afterwards took her
life. He was then obscure, despised, and had been coughed down when he
rose to speak. She discerned his talents, and encouraged him. He said
little, but was always near her, listening to all she said; and in his
after days of power, he reproduced, in many a speech, what he had heard
this wondrous woman say. In this time of his unpopularity she
unquestionably saved him from the guillotine by her own personal and
persistent intercession with men in power.

By the time that the session of this assembly drew near its close the
ground-swell began to be felt of that tempest of popular wrath which
eventually swept over France, and w