to move with it, the _côté droit_ could only call for vengeance, its
political power was now confined to an imprecation.

The left side lost at one blow its leader and controller; in Mirabeau
the national man had ceased to exist, and only the men of party
remained, and they were Barnave and the two Lameths. These men humbled,
rebuked, before the ascendency of Mirabeau, had attempted, long before
his death, to balance the sovereignty of his genius by the exaggeration
of their doctrines and harangues. Mirabeau was but the apostle--they
would fain have been the faction-leaders of the time. Jealous of his
influence, they would have crushed his talents beneath the superiority
of their popularity. Mediocrity thinks to equal genius by outraging
reason. A diminution of thirty or forty votes had taken place in the
left side. This was the work of Barnave and the Lameths. The club of the
friends of the constitution become the Jacobin Club, responded to them
from without. The popular agitation excited by them was restrained by
Mirabeau, who rallied against them the left, the centre, and the
intelligent members of the right side. They conspired, they caballed,
they fomented divisions in opinion all the more that they had not
control in the Assembly.

Mirabeau was dead, and now the field was open to them. The
Lameths--courtiers, educated by the kindness of the royal family,
overwhelmed by the favours and pensions of the king, had the conspicuous
defection of Mirabeau without having the excuse of his wrongs against
the monarchy: this defection was one of their titles to popular favour.
Clever men, they carried with them into the national cause the conduct
of Courts in which they had been brought up: still their love of the
Revolution was disinterested and sincere. Their eminent talents did not
equal their ambition. Crushed by Mirabeau, they stirred up against him