When Mirabeau died a significant change of temper was drawing over the Assembly. As the framers of the constitution approached its completion the truth began to press home on them that its stability was imperilled by the continuance of disorder. They saw taxes refused, administrative bodies pursuing whatever course was right in their own eyes, peasants pillaging corn, street mobs persecuting nonjurors, soldiers refusing obedience to officers, their own popularity waning, clubs usurping authority, ultra-democratic journals discrediting the constitution, and incessantly urging on the people the duty of insurrection. Now that a free constitution was established, and reform effected in every branch of the public service, justification for this state of things from their point of view vanished. Lafayette, Barnave, the Lameths, and other deputies of the left, who in 1790 had purposely sought to render the executive weak, in 1791 began to fear lest they had overshot their mark. Yet for them to change their course was no easy matter. They still sought for popular support, and clung to the principles on which the constitution of which they had themselves been the authors was based. Fear of reaction, moreover, still weighed heavily on them. The reactionary press, in coarse and violent language condemned the entire work of the Assembly, and threatened with the axe or the gallows all who from the opening of the States had at any time given support to revolutionary principles. Such threats were not without meaning at a time when emigrants were collecting in armed bands at Basel and Coblentz, threatening invasion; and the King’s brother, the Count of Artois, was calling on foreign powers to restore by force of arms the authority of the throne. The primary assemblies for the election of the constitutional legislature were already meeting, when an event took place which brought into clearer light the relations existing between all parties. CHAPTER V. THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY. ♦Flight of the Royal Family.♦