ascended it with him.


XV.

The right side in the National Assembly consisted of men, the natural
opponents of the movement, the nobility and higher clergy. All, however,
were not of the same rank nor the same title. Seditions are found
amongst the lower rank, revolutions in the higher. Seditions are but the
angry workings of the people--revolutions are the ideas of the epoch.
Ideas begin in the head of the nation. The French Revolution was a
generous thought of the aristocracy. This thought fell into the hands of
the people, who framed of it a weapon against the _noblesse_, the
throne, and religion. The philosophy of the saloons became revolt in the
streets: nevertheless all the great houses of the kingdom had given
apostles to the first dogmata of the Revolution: the States General, the
ancient theatre of the importance and triumphs of the higher nobility,
had tempted the ambition of their heirs, and they had marched in the van
of the reformers. _Esprit de corps_ could not restrain them when the
question of uniting with the Tiers Etat had been invoked. The
Montmorencies, Noailles, La Rochefoucaulds, Clermont Tonnerres, Lally
Tollendals, Virieux, d'Aiguillons, Lauzans, Montesquieus, Lameths,
Mirabeaus, the Duc d'Orleans, first prince of the blood, the Count de
Provence, brother of the king, king himself afterwards as Louis XVIII.,
had given an impulse to the boldest innovations. They had each borrowed
their momentary popularity from principles easier to enunciate than
restrain, and that popularity had nearly forsaken them all. So soon as
these theorists of speculative revolution saw that they were carried
away in the torrent, they attempted to ascend the stream from whose
source they had started; some again surrounded the throne, others had