The events of that day proved that Lafayette had not the quality of a great leader of men. How much of his ill success was due to bad luck, how much to over-conscientiousness in fulfilling the letter of his oath, how much to physical weariness, we may never know. The royal family believed he had saved their lives, and the vilest accusations against him, including the one that he really wished Louis to fall a victim of the mob, appear to have been manufactured twenty-five years later in the bitterness of another political struggle. It is significant that very soon after the king came to Paris Lafayette held a stormy interview with the Duc d'Orléans, who forthwith left France. [Pg 206]Since that melancholy ride back to Paris the rulers of France have never lived at Versailles. Within ten days the National Assembly followed the king to town, and during the whole remaining period of the Revolution the mob had the machinery of government in its keeping. It invaded the legislative halls to listen to the making of the Constitution, it howled approval of speeches or drowned them in hisses, and called out from the windows reports to the crowds packing the streets below. Political clubs soon became the real censors of public opinion, taking an ever larger place in the life of the people, until, alas! they began to take part in the death of many of them. The most influential club of all was the Jacobins, known by that name because of the disused monastery where it held its meetings. It began as an exclusive club of well-to-do gentlemen of all parties, who paid large dues and met to discuss questions of interest. Then it completely changed its character, took into its organization other clubs in Paris and other cities, and by this means became a vast, nation-wide political machine of such iron discipline that it was said a decree of the Jacobins was better executed than any law passed by the National Assembly. When its decrees grew more radical its membership changed by the simple process of expelling conservative members, until Robespierre became its controlling spirit. Another club more radical still was the Cordelières, in which Marat and Danton, those stormy petrels of the Terror, held sway. This smaller organization influenced even the [Pg 207]Jacobins and through them every village in France. Several of the most radical leaders published newspapers of vast influence, like Marat's _Ami du Peuple_, which carried their opinions farther than the spoken word could do, out into peaceful country lanes. In the cities the great power of the theater was directed to the same violent ends. In vain the more conservative patriots started clubs of their own; the others had too great headway. The Feuillants, that Lafayette and Bailly were instrumental in founding, was called contemptuously the club of the monarchists. All these changes were gradual, but little by little, as time passed, the aims of the revolutionists altered. What had been