the door, which they decorated with ensigns and ribbons, they greeted him
with enthusiastic applause. But he was destined to suffer a reverse of
fortune, and to be the subject of the most unjust and cruel persecution.
The violent party prevailed: Lafayette and constitutional liberty, were
proscribed; and the spirit of anarchy and misrule dictated the violent
proceedings which deluged France in blood.

Lafayette, finding all his attempts to restore order and to maintain the
constitution in vain, speedily returned to the army on the frontiers. This
must have been a moment of great anxiety and suspense. Some suppose that,
attached as most of the military were to him and supported by his friends
of the moderate party, if he had marched his troops to Paris he might have
defended the King from indignity, and restored the reign of law. But this
is doubtful. The probability is, that with his love of justice and his
correct principles, he could not persuade himself "that the end would
justify the means;" and that he chose rather to submit to a cruel destiny,
than to violate the constitution he had sworn to support, by resorting to
physical force for the accomplishment of honorable purposes, and to be the
occasion even indirectly of increasing the misery, in which his unhappy
country was involved. He was, indeed, accused by his enemies of a design to
march to Paris with his troops and to force the assembly into a compliance
with his views. But this was a most unfounded calumny. When the minister
for the home department wrote to him on the subject, in the name of the
Assembly he replied--"If I were questioned respecting my principles, I
should say, that as a constant proclaimer and defender of the rights of
man, and the sovereignty of the people, I have every where and always
resisted authorities which liberty disavowed and which the national will
had not delegated; and that I have every where and always obeyed those, of
which a free constitution had fixed the forms and the limits. But I am
questioned respecting a fact--Did I propose to Marshal Luckner to march to