The Rising Storm

the motion and there followed a stampede of self-denial which afterwards earned the session the name of 'The Night of Sacrifices'.

The Bishop of Chartres proposed the abolition of the game laws; de Beauharnais that punishment for crime should be the same for all classes, and that all ranks in the Public Services should be thrown open to everyone; de la Rochefoucauld that the vote be given to all serfs remaining in the Kingdom. The Archbishop of Aix moved the abolition of the salt tax; the Due de Chatelet that tithes in kind should be commuted, and the Bishop of Uzes recognized the right of the nation to dispose of the property of the Church. The deputies of the Third Estate, not to be outdone, then tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to renounce the privileges of the Provinces and cities they represented.

The renowned economist, Dupont de Nemours, was one of the very few to throw some doubt on the wisdom of this wholesale wrecking of tike ancient order, and Count Lally-Tollendal, the foremost Liberal of all the nobles, the only man to keep his head. He sent a note up to the President that read 'Nobody any longer has any self-control; break up the sitting.' But a positive madness had seized upon the assembly. Before dawn it had passed every motion; and, since there was no Upper House to send back the bills for reconsideration, they became forthwith the law of France.

The result was catastrophic. In a single night the whole economy of the nation had been destroyed. Already, for a year past, or more, there had been increasing difficulty in collecting taxes; now the people refused to pay any at all. The old courts of justice had continued to function, although with decreasing efficiency; now all feudal courts and many superior ones were wiped out entirely. Overnight the Assembly had destroyed the very foundations of French society without any attempt to create even a vestige of a new system.

It was no wonder that money was scarce. Everyone who had any was now clinging to it from fear that once it was gone they would not be able to get any more. The treasury was empty, the Army and the public services unpaid. And the King could not help, as he had given all his gold plate to the nation as a means of reducing the national debt. What the colossal extravagance of Louis XIV and XV had failed to achieve the National Assembly had accomplished. France was bankrupt.

From Monsieur Aubert Roger learned that there had been changes at the British Embassy in recent months. His last contact with it had been soon after his return from Italy, so he was unaware that early in July Mr. Daniel Hailes had left on a visit to Berlin, as a prelude to becoming Minister Plenipotentiary in Warsaw, and that early in August the Duke of Dorset had gone on leave from which he would not be returning. Lord Robert Fitzgerald had joined the Embassy as First Secretary, in the spring, and was in charge pending the appointment of a new Ambassador. Roger could well understand that His Grace would have little taste for Paris now that so many of his friends there had gone into exile, and he was glad to hear of the worthy Mr. Hailes' promo­tion; but he did not feel that the departure of the latter would greatly affect him, as at their meetings he had generally been the giver, rather than the receiver, of information.

To acquaint oneself with the proceedings of the National Assembly it was no longer necessary to go there, or rely on the often garbled third- and fourth-hand accounts of others. After the July insurrections the Press was freed from all restraint and a number of newspapers, independent of the Government, were now appearing in Paris. They were small in size and more on the lines of political essays than news-sheets, but their circulation, particularly that of the more violent ones, soon became immense. Loustallot's The Revolutions of Paris reached a sale of 200,000 copies, and a paper called The Friend of the People, first issued in mid-September, bid fair to rival it as the organ of the extreme Left. The latter was the work of a doctor of forty-seven, named Marat, a man embittered by ill-success and diseased in body and mind, and his violent diatribes against the rich did more than any other single factor to inspire the bestial excesses later committed by the mobs.

But whatever their shade of opinion, these journals gave the gist of the problems with which the Assembly was concerning itself, so by obtaining a collection of back numbers Rogers quickly acquired a general view of the present situation.

Having done so he pondered the problem of whether he should go to Versailles and present himself to the Queen. Now that so many of her friends had gone into exile, and small fry like himself were no longer likely to incur danger from associating with her, he felt confident that she would be pleased to see him. But he decided against it. Power to govern future events did not lie in the royal circle any longer. It was now vested in the leaders of the National Assembly, and a few out­standing men in Paris. Therefore, he felt, little of advantage was to be gained by dancing attendance at the emasculated Court; and, more­over, his hopeless longing for Isabella still made him so misanthropic that he shunned the thought of engaging again in the light social life he would find there.

This time he had brought with him a few old suits. They were serviceable garments that he wore during the day when at home at Lymington, and in them he could pass easily as a small property owner or respectable business man. So, eschewing his silks and satins, he now went about in honest broadcloth, intent on finding out what His Highness of Orleans was up to, and what was likely to be the outcome of the near-desperate depression in Paris.

As everyone was now equal a man could walk into any public building he liked without let or hindrance, and every committee in the city had its daily crowd of idlers overseeing its proceedings; so Roger found no difficulty at all in penetrating to the committee-rooms of the Hotel de Ville.

There, he spent a morning watching the unfortunate Bailly grap­pling with the problems of feeding the capital. As Mayor it was his duty to ensure the daily bread of 700,000 people, and with commerce breaking down in all directions he could never be sure of more than a forty-eight hours' supply.

Roger left the harassed man with deep sympathy for his un­fortunate lot and a great admiration for the way in which he managed to keep a clear head during the often ill-informed digressions of his » colleagues, and the frequent interruptions of the still less well-informed onlookers.

Next morning he went to have a look at General Lafayette, and was by no means so impressed. Lafayette was now responsible for the safety of Paris, and the job was clearly beyond his capabilities. His task was, admittedly, a superhuman one, as his troops, apart from the old Gardes Francais, were all volunteers, and imbued with the new idea that the opinion of a private was as good as, or better than, that of a Colonel. But the orders he issued often appeared contradictory, and he showed great weakness in giving way to the wishes of deputations of the rank and file who presented themselves to him almost hour by hour, without any previous intimation of their coming.

It remained for Roger to see if he could get a dress-circle view of the Due d'Orleans, and that, too, proved easy, as the Prince, anxious to court the maximum possible popularity, had now opened practically every room in the Palais Royal to the public. That evening, Roger found him in one of the larger salons, surrounded by a crowd of syco­phants and being watched by groups of people, apparently composed of both obvious riot-raisers and casual spectators, who stood round the walls.

Louis-Philippe d'Orleans was then forty-two years old. He had the Bourbon cast of countenance, but his features were not so gross as those of the King, and his manner, in contrast to that of his awkward cousin, was gay, easy and affable. As Due de Chartres, before the death of his father, he had already acquired the reputation of a rather stupid and very dissipated young man. He was a close friend of the equally dissipated Prince of Wales, and often stayed with him in England.

D'Orleans was not distinguished for his courage. With the prospect of succeeding his father-in-law, the Due de Penthievre, as Grand Admiral of France, he had been sent to serve in the Navy during the late war; but in the only engagement at which he was present, although then a man of thirty-one, he had hidden himself in the hold of the Flagship. Madame Marie Antoinette had protested that, after dis­gracing himself in such a fashion, it was unthinkable to give him the post of Grand Admiral, so he had been made Colonel-General of the Hussars instead; and it was this, added to the fact that while still a young girl she had repulsed his amorous advances, that had resulted in the bitter hatred he bore the Queen.

Roger mingled with some of the groups by the wall and got in conversation with them. Among other things he learnt that the pretty woman seated next to the Duke was his English mistress, Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott, who now shared his affections with the Comtesse de Buffon. At the moment, he gathered, Monsieur d'Orleans' prospects were temporarily under a cloud, as the King had lost his sovereign power without the Duke gaining anything thereby, and the hopes of the nation were becoming more and more centred in the National Assembly, to the detriment of any individual who might aspire to personal aggrandize­ment through the eclipse of the throne.