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Barnave wrote to the Queen that the staff of the guard was already attacked; that the Assembly was about to pass a decree to reduce it; and he entreated her to prevail on the King, the very instant the decree should appear, to form the staff afresh of persons whose names he sent her.
The ministers, with the exception of M. de Montmorin, insisted upon the necessity of accepting the constitutional act in its entirety. Malouet wished the King to express himself candidly respecting any errors or dangers that he might observe in the constitution. But Duport and Barnave, alarmed at the spirit prevailing in the Jacobin Club,
Robespierre, through the Jacobin Club, which now recovered much of the ground it had lost in July, became the manager of the Extreme Left, which gradually separated from Brissot and the Girondins. The ministry was in the hands of the Feuillants, who were guided by Lameth, while Barnave was the secret adviser of the queen.
The Constituent Assembly was then blind and weak, not to create a republic as the natural instrument of the Revolution. Mirabeau, Bailly, La Fayette, Siéyès, Barnave, Talleyrand, and Lameth acted in this respect like philosophers, and not great politicians, as events have amply proved.
On being pressed by the Queen to take something, "Madame," replied Barnave, "on so solemn an occasion the deputies of the National Assembly ought to occupy your Majesties solely about their mission, and by no means about their wants." In short, his respectful delicacy, his considerate attentions, and all that he said, gained the esteem not only of the Queen, but of Madame Elisabeth also.
He reckoned greatly on the strength of his party in the Assembly, because he measured the power of their opinions by the talent with which they expressed them. The queen did not feel a similar confidence. "Take courage, madame," wrote Barnave; "it is true our banner is torn, but the word Constitution is still legible thereon.
Barnave reproached his colleagues in the tribune, and devoted them to public execration with the same voice which had raised and rallied the Friends of the Constitution. Liberty was as yet but a partial arm, which was unblushingly broken in the hands of an opponent.
Salles defended the recommendation of the committee. Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said: "The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected.
Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition.
Barnave was one of those who was sent to bring back the fugitive King and Queen from Varennes, and the journey by their side in the coach unstrung his spirit. He became one of the court's clandestine advisers. Men of this weak susceptibility of imagination are not fit for times of revolution. To be on the side of the court was to betray the cause of the nation.
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