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Updated: June 26, 2025
I burnt almost all those belonging to the Queen. She put her family letters, a great deal of correspondence which she thought it necessary to preserve for the history of the era of the Revolution, and particularly Barnave's letters and her answers, of which she had copies, into a portfolio, which she entrusted to M. de J . That gentleman was unable to save this deposit, and it was burnt.
Barnave's companion, Petion, disgusted them all; including Barnave. He behaved with ostentatious rudeness and brutality.
He covered with his body the life of those who had been his masters. His very devotion was a triumph; the object of that devotion was in his queen. That queen was young, handsome, majestic; but brought to the level of ordinary humanity by her alarm for her husband and his children. Her tearful eyes besought their safety from Barnave's eyes.
She told me he was much altered, that he was full of talent and noble feeling. "A feeling of pride which I cannot much blame in a young man belonging to the Tiers Etat," she said, "made him applaud everything which smoothed the road to rank and fame for that class in which he was born. And if we get the power in our own hands again, Barnave's pardon is already written on our hearts."
One wonders whether, if little Louis had lived to be a man, he would have been as ignorant, selfish, and unwise; whether there is anything in belonging to the old royal family of France which stands between its princes and wisdom and knowledge. If so, one is less sorry that he died so early as he did. Barnave's last words impressed the feelings of the queen, but had no other effect.
He dreaded the government of the poor over the rich; for Barnave's political philosophy consisted in middle-class sovereignty government by that kind of property which depends on constant labour, integrity, foresight, and self-denial, excluding poverty and opulence.
Here Barnave's voice was lost in the applauses of the majority, and the Assembly electrified, seemed for the moment unanimous in its monarchical feeling. At the sitting of the 25th of August, the Assembly discussed the article of the constitution which declared that the members of the royal family could not exercise the rights of citizens.
She then told me that Barnave's conduct upon the road was perfectly correct, while Potion's republican rudeness was disgusting; that the latter ate and drank in the King's berlin in a slovenly manner, throwing the bones of the fowls out through the window at the risk of sending them even into the King's face; lifting up his glass, when Madame Elisabeth poured him out wine, to show her that there was enough, without saying a word; that this offensive behaviour must have been intentional, because the man was not without education; and that Barnave was hurt at it.
The royalist party had voted the non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues. The republican party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists.
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