Calvert of Strathore | Page 6

the
impossible finances of France after the fall of that magnificent
spendthrift, Monsieur Colonne. He, in turn, had been swept from his
office and replaced by the pompous and incompetent Necker. Lafayette,
the deus ex machina of the times, had asked for his States-General, and
now in this never-sufficiently-to-be-remembered year of 1789 they
were to be convoked.
All France was disquieted by the elections--nay, more, agitated and
agitating. Men who had never thought before were thinking now, and,
as was inevitable to such unused intellects, were thinking badly. For the
first time the common people were permitted to think. For the first time
they were allowed, even urged, to look into their wretched hearts and
tell their lord and king what grievances they found there. What wonder
that when the ashes were raked from the long-smouldering fires of envy,
of injustice, of oppression, of extortion, of misrule of every conceivable
sort, they sprang into fierce flame? What wonder that when the bonds
of silence were loosed from their miserable mouths, such a wild clamor
went up to Heaven as made the king tremble upon his throne and his
ministers shake with fear? Who could tell at what moment this
unlooked-for, unprecedented clemency might be withdrawn and silence

once more be sealed upon them? What wonder, then, that they made
the most of their opportunity? What wonder that, suddenly finding
themselves strong, who had been weak, they did make the most of it?
The world seemed topsy-turvy. Strange ideas and theories were being
written and talked about. Physical science had been revolutionized.
People suddenly discovered that what they had held all their lives to be
facts were entire misconceptions of the truth. And, if they had been so
mistaken about the facts of physical science, might they not be equally
mistaken about theology, about law, about politics? Everywhere was
doubt and questioning. Revolution was in the air. It was the fashion,
and the young French officers returned from the War of Independence
in the American colonies found themselves alike the heroes of the
common people and of the fashionable world.
True to its nature, the nobility played with revolution as it had played
with everything from the beginning of time. It played with reform, with
suggestions to abandon its privileges, its titles, with the freedom of the
newly born press, with the prerogatives of the crown, with the tiers état,
with life, liberty, and happiness. It was a dangerous game, and in the
danger lay its fascination. Society felt its foundations shake, and the
more insecure it felt itself to be the more feverish seemed its desire to
enjoy life to the dregs, to seize upon that fleet-footed Pleasure who ever
kept ahead of her pursuers. There was a constant succession of balls,
dramatic fêtes, dinner-parties, of official entertainments by the
members of the diplomatic corps in this volcanic year of 1789. The
ministers of Louis's court, being at their wits' end to know what was to
be done to allay the disturbances, were of the mind that they could and
would, at least, enjoy themselves. The King having always been at his
wits' end was not conscious of being in any unusual or dangerous
position. As short-sighted mentally as he was physically, he saw in the
popular excitement of the times nothing to dread. Conscious of his own
good intentions toward his people, he saw nothing in their
ever-increasing demands but evidences of a spirit of progress which he
was the first to applaud. Unmindful of the fact that "the most dangerous
moment for a bad government is the moment when it meddles with
reform," he yielded everything. The nobles, noting with bitterness his

concessions to the tiers état, told themselves that the King had
abandoned them; the common people, suspicious and bewildered, told
themselves that their King was but deceiving them. The King, informed
of the hostile attitude of the nobility and the ingratitude of the masses,
vacillated between his own generous impulses and the despotic
demands of the court party. By the King's weakness, more than by all
else, were loosened the foundations of that throne of France, already
tottering under its long-accumulated weight of injustice, of mad
extravagance, of dissoluteness, of bloody crime.
Nature herself seemed to be in league with the discontent of the times.
A long drouth in the summer, which had made the poor harvests poorer
still, was followed by that famous winter of 1789--that winter of
merciless, of unexampled, cold for France. And in the heat of that long
summer and in the cold of that still longer winter, the storm gathered
fast which was to rise higher and higher until it should beat upon the
very throne itself, and all that was left of honor and justice in France
should perish therein.
CHAPTER III