BOOK XIII.
I.
Dumouriez combined all the requisites of boldness, devotion to the cause, and talent that the Girondists required, and yet, until then, a second-rate man, and almost unknown, had no fortune to hope for but as theirs culminated.

His name would not give umbrage to their genius, and if he proved incompetent, or rebelled against their projects, they would remove him without fear, or crush him without pity.

Brissot, the diplomatic oracle of the Gironde, was evidently to be the minister who was one day to control our foreign relations, and who _en attendant_ was to govern for the moment under the name of Dumouriez.
The Girondists had discovered Dumouriez in the obscurity of an existence, until then very insignificant, through Gensonne, whose colleague Dumouriez had been in the mission which the Constituent Assembly had given him to visit and examine the position of the western departments, already agitated by the secret presentiment of civil war and the early religious troubles.

During this inquiry, which lasted several months, the two commissioners had frequent opportunities for an interchange of their most private thoughts on the great events which at this moment agitated men's minds.

They became much attached to each other.