^8 \- Charles Kiihlmann 



altogether. The municipality of Marseilles had asked the Jacobins 

 to indicate the attitude it ought to assume toward Lafayette. 

 Evidently the drift of the debate made clear to Mirabeau that the 

 answer would be unfavorable to the general. He took the floor 

 again and while, to conceal his real object, he still represented 

 Lafayette as harboring a criminal ambition and declared his at- 

 tempt to influence the whole kingdom as a shameful presumption, 

 he maintained that there was no occasion really to fear him because 

 of the zeal, the courage and the patriotism of the Parisians who 

 stood in his way as a check.-^ This was another of his renowned 

 " oblique" marches, for his object was to prevent Lafayette from 

 being denounced to the municipality of Marseilles. How success- 

 ful he was may be gathered from the Orateur du peiiple which 

 said: 



Mirabeau spoke and the phantom of the generalship vanished before all 

 eyes like the smallest cloud before the first ra3'S of the sun. 



Two days later the municipality of Marseilles was told that the 

 society was not attached to any particular individual, but would 

 not fail to denounce anyone who betrayed the public welfare.^^ 



We have now before us the elements of the situation which 

 produced the curious scene at the Jacobins on December 6. The 



** Compare this with his contemptuous opinion of Paris expressed a few 

 days later in his forty-seventh note to the court, Bacourt, II, 417-18. 

 Among other things consider the following : " Cent folliculaires, dont la 

 seule ressonrce est le desordre; une multitude d'etrangers independants, 

 qui soufflent la discorde dans tons lieux publics; tous les ennemis de 

 I'ancienne court; une immense populace, accoutumee depuis une annee a 

 des succes et a des crimes; une foule de grands proprietaires qui n'osent 

 pas se montrer, parce qu'ils ont trop a perdre ; la reunion de tous les auteurs 

 de la revolution et de ses principaux agents ; dans les basses classes, la lie 

 de la nation; dans les classes plus elevees, ce qu'elle a de plus corrompu, 

 voila ce qui est Paris." 



It would seem that if Lafayette had been the man for it, he might have 

 found here the elements out of which to create a dangerous military power. 

 It was precisely because Mirabeau knew that Lafayette would not betray 

 the country, but that a less scrupulous man might do so, given Lafayette's 

 opportunity, that he was not willing to take chances on a change such as 

 Robespierre had attempted to bring about. 



^Aulard, Societe des Jacobins, I, 408-09. 



360 



