BOOK III.
I.
There is for a people, as for individuals, an instinct of conservation which warns and "gives them pause," even under the impulses of the most blind passions, before the dangers into which they are about to fling themselves headlong.

They seem suddenly to recede at the aspect of this abyss, into which but now they were hastening precipitately.

The intermissions of human passions are short and fugitive, but they give time to events, returns to wisdom, and opportunities to statesmen.

These are moments in which they seize the hesitating and intimidated spirit of the people, in order to make them create a reaction against their own excesses, and to lead them back by the very revulsion of the passions that have already urged them too far.

The day after the 25th of June, 1791, France experienced one of those throes of repentance which save a people.