Then it can again resume the monarchy, and say, "Reign in the name of the ideas I have given thee!" XIII.
The Constituent Assembly was then blind and weak, not to create a republic as the natural instrument of the Revolution.

Mirabeau, Bailly, La Fayette, Sieyes, Barnave, Talleyrand, and Lameth acted in this respect like philosophers, and not great politicians, as events have amply proved.

They believed the Revolution finished as soon as it was written, and the monarchy converted as soon as it had sworn to preserve the constitution.

The Revolution was but begun, and the oath of royalty to the Revolution as futile as the oath of the Revolution to royalty.
These two elements could not mingle until after an interval of an age--this interval was the republic.

A nation does not change in a day, or in fifty years, from revolutionary excitements to monarchical repose.
It is because we forgot it at the hour when we should have remembered it, that the crisis was so terrible, and that we yet feel its effects.
If the Revolution, which perpetually follows itself, had had its own natural and fitting government, the republic--this republic would have been less tumultuous and less perturbed than the five attempts we made for a monarchy.