have much the same value. For the rest, it is legitimate enough to
suppose that there needed but one single act of energy, absolute
loyalty, disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to change the whole
course of events. If the flight to Varennes--in itself an act of
duplicity and culpable weakness--had only been arranged a little
less childishly, foolishly (as any man would have arranged it who
was accustomed to the habits of life), there can be not a doubt that
Louis XVI. would never have died on the scaffold. Was it a god, or
his blind reliance on Marie Antoinette, that led him to entrust de
Fersen--a stupid, conceited, and tactless creature--with the
preparations and control of this disastrous journey? Was it a force
instinct with great mystery, or only his own unconsciousness,
heedlessness, thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange apathetic
submission--such as the weak and the idle will often display at
moments of danger, when they seem almost to challenge their star--
that induced him again and again, at each change of horses, to put
his head out of the carriage window, and thus be recognised three or
four times? And at the moment that decided all, in that throbbing
and sinister night of Varennes--a night indeed when fatality should
have been an immovable mountain governing all the horizon--do we not
see this fatality stumbling at every step, like a child that is
learning to walk and wonders, is it this white pebble or that tuft
of grass that will cause it to fall to right or to left of the path?
And then, at the tragic halt of the carriage, in that black night:
at the terrible cry sent forth by young Drouet, "In the name of the
Nation!" there had needed but one order from the king, one lash of
the whip, one pull at the collar--and you and I would probably not
have been born, for the history of the world had been different. And
again, in presence of the mayor, who stood there, respectful,
disconcerted, hesitating, ready to fling every gate open had but one