Page:An adventure (1911).pdf/142

 could lead the way. To obey every behest of the Legislative Assembly and of the mob showed a lamentable lack of wisdom, but even such a poor policy had brought him an undoubted though fleeting popularity. He had appeared to take the side of the opponents of monarchy; he had divested himself of prerogatives; had sworn to a Constitution beyond his power to carry out, and had submitted to the indignity of placing the red bonnet on his head; but had she not helped to make all this short-sighted weakness even more unavailing than it need have been? What was the use of humbling the aristocracy along with himself, and of acting against his own convictions, if at the same time he consented to plans for escaping, and was known to be so far untrustworthy to his own professions that at every crisis he listened to her incessant urgings to the more spirited policy, by which he could instantly rally the royal forces?

Bitterly she knew that she had never prevailed to overcome his fatal belief that the King was never to shed the blood of a Frenchman, even if he were a disturber of the public peace; but she had ever to bear the blame of