No man can imagine Washington taking such a step as that. La Fayette suffered from it, and he afterwards served his country nobly. But the eternal mischief of his weakness had been done. Girondists and Jacobins, relieved from the fear of him, turned to mutual destruction and murder. The Reign of Terror was on. The nation was plunged in an orgy of blood. Four hundred thousand men and women were put to death. Liberty in France was assassinated in the house of its friends. One man, I have said, always comes to the top of things. With La Fayette gone, Robespierre, the man of blood, prevailed. Robespierre was the Terror. And after him, the Terror having appeased its fearful thirst, and Robespierre's head having gone into the basket with his victims', there came another man to take advantage of the paralysis the perverted Revolution had inflicted upon France. That man was Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte freed La Fayette from captivity. Bonaparte held him in contempt, calling him a "noodle." It was not so bad as that. But Napoleon despised a man who had had his chance and failed to grasp it. Had La Fayette proved equal to that opportunity, France would have been organized as a constitutional republic. The Terror would not have been. Napoleon's ambition might have been held in check. The balance in Europe would have been maintained, but the leadership of France would have been consolidated and become immortal. The nations would have followed her example. Monarchy would have died of dry rot. The dream of a United States of Europe might have been realized--perhaps with a city of La Fayette, the capital of the vast confederation, the European equivalent city of Washington, smiling down, it may be, from the neutral shores of the Lake of Constance to east, to west, to north, to south, with a benediction of peace. CHAPTER XIV IF GILBERT LIVINGSTON HAD NOT VOTED NEW YORK INTO THE UNION How many Americans of the present day realize that the State of New York, at the time of the adoption of the national Constitution, was radically and overwhelmingly opposed to entrance into the Union which the Constitution proposed, and was at last forced into the league of States only by the demonstration that the State would be isolated and cut off from its neighbor States if it did not join, with a tariff wall raised against it? It is indeed hard for New Yorkers to realize, as they live to-day under the Stars and Stripes, having forgotten what their State flag is, and being among the most zealous supporters of the Union, that their State led the opposition to the Constitution, and that but for the influence of a very few men in two other States, New York might have prevented the consummation of that "more perfect union."