This is clear enough in all conscience to show what was Danton’s main pre-occupation in the days of June 1791. And if, upon the other hand, you will turn to Lafayette’s Memoirs, the third volume, the 83rd and following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette’s pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the occasion to deliver the most definite and (luckily) the most demonstrably false of his many accusations of venality. He tells us that he could not reply because it would have “cost Montmorin his life;” that Montmorin “had the receipt for the 100,000 francs;” that Danton had been “reimbursed to the extent of 100,000 francs for a place worth 10,000,” and so forth. We know now exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his colleagues at the court of appeal,[98] and we know that Lafayette, writing a generation later, animated by a bitter hatred, and remembering that somebody had paid Danton something, and with his head full of vague rumours of bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors common to vain and vacillating men. But at this juncture the main point that should be seized is that Danton was taking the opportunity of the King’s evasion to attack Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later the old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the popular anger which the commander of the guard thought himself bound to repress. It is this that will explain why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word for the Republican “false start,” was yet marked out, fled, and returned to lead the opposition. The Cordeliers followed Danton’s lead. They got up a petition,[99] signed by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that the affair should be laid before the country, but not demanding the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar, their president, declared himself a monarchist. But the petition, though read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, on the 9th of July, the Cordeliers presented another. Charles de Lameth (who was president that fortnight) refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was dumb; it was determined (like its successor a year later) to do nothing—an attitude which (for all it knew) might be very wise, and those who were following Danton determined upon a definite policy. On Friday the 15th, at the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition which begged that the Assembly should _first_ recognise Louis as having abdicated by his flight, unless the nation voted his reinstatement, and _secondly_ (in case the nation did not do so), take measures to have him constitutionally replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist. The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ de Mars on the altar, and there to obtain signatures. It was drawn up by Danton, Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded most of it. The events that follow must be noted with some care, because on their exact sequence depends our judgment of Lafayette’s action and of Danton’s politics.