It ploughs in its wake a track so deep that we
feel that the sea must at last be yielding up one of her secrets;
but all things happen the same as on a breathless and cloudless day,
when languid wavelets roll to and fro in the limpid, fathomless
water; from the ocean arises no living thing, not a blade of grass,
not a stone.
If aught could discourage the sage--though he is not truly wise
whose astonishment is not enlightened, and his interest quickened,
by the unforeseen thing that discourages--it would be the discovery,
in this French Revolution, of more than one destiny that is
infinitely sadder, more overwhelming, more inexplicable, than that
of Louis XVI. I refer to the Girondins: above all, to the admirable
Vergniaud. To-day even, though we know all that the future kept
hidden from him, and are able to divine what it was that was sought
by the instinctive desire of that exceptional century--to-day even
it were surely not possible to act more nobly, more wisely, than he.
Let fortune hurl any man into the burning centre of a movement that
had swept every barrier down, it were surely not possible to reveal
a finer character or loftier spirit. Could we fashion, deep down in
our heart, out of all that is purest within us, out of all our
wisdom and all our love, some beautiful, spotless creature with
never a thought of self, without weakness or error--such a being
would desire a place by the side of Vergniaud, on those deserted
Convention seats, "whereon the shadow of death seemed already to
hover," that he might think as Vergniaud thought, and so speak, and
act.
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