There was only the statesman wanting.
Never had the National Assembly presented a spectacle so imposing and so calm as during the five days which had succeeded the king's departure.
It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity.
It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it.
It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion--called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne--regarding the throne itself as inviolable.

The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:--in the irresponsible chief of the state.

These three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public reason was her sole constitution.

There was no longer a king, for he was a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law, for the constitution was incomplete: there was no longer a minister, for the executive power was suspended; and yet the kingdom was standing erect, was acting, organising, defending itself, preserving itself--and what is still more marvellous, controlled itself.

It held in reserve in a palace the principal machinery of the constitution,--Royalty; and the day when the work is accomplished, it puts the king in his place, and says to him, "Be free and reign." II.
One thing only dishonours this majestic interregnum of the nation--the temporary captivity of the king and his family.