But it was the fate of that strict character to effect nothing at all in all his long and sterile life! A Frenchman in touch with France, finding himself, as Lafayette found himself, cheered by numbers of his old National Guard when leaving the parliament, would have gone straight with the mob to the Jacobins and destroyed them, taking such consequences as might have followed. But Lafayette loved order, apparently for its own dull sake, and that day ended in nothing but a further accentuation of the breach between himself and the new Revolutionary group in Paris. Of that group the now rising name, soon to be the leading name, was that of Robespierre; and if you will turn to Robespierre’s writing and speaking during those days you will find how accurately he judged the temper of his own people despite his Picard coldness. The cruellest and the [Illustration: A POPULAR PRINT AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION _To face p. 142_ ] truest thing said against Lafayette in those days of failure was Robespierre’s phrase: “Lafayette, to succeed, must first win a victory over the enemy.” Lafayette stayed the following day, the twenty-ninth of June, Friday, in Paris, discovered how bitterly the old constitutional position had made him hated at court, and learned the truth of the phrase he had heard--the queen’s phrase--“We will not be saved twice by M. de Lafayette.” On Saturday, the thirtieth, he took his way back to his army. Now, note that throughout all this, that army was still closely bound to its general, and that Lafayette, upon his return to his camp, was still secure in the loyalty of his regiments. It was consonant with his character that, without caring in the least for the insults of the court, he still worked to secure the safety of the king, for the king was part of the Constitution. He suggested--what had long been a commonplace--the retirement of the court to Compiègne, “a town,” he pathetically writes, “within the limits to which the Constitution allows the king to travel from the capital”; he promised to lend the authority of his name and the active aid of his old National Guard to the monarch if such an evasion were attempted. He was ready, in a word, to do all that a soldier could do for the saving of Louis and for the crushing of the Paris radicals--just short of acting “in an unconstitutional manner.” That he would never do! And meanwhile Fate and Europe and the French people between them were moving with no more care for the Constitution than right and anger and love ever have for a letter or a precedent.