It was the peculiar ill-fortune of Louis that more than once the very efforts made by people who desired to assist him increased his perils. The events of the 20th of June had shocked and alarmed even La Fayette. From the beginning of the Revolution he had vacillated between a desire for a republic and for a limited monarchy on something like the English pattern, without being able to decide which to prefer. He had shown himself willing to court a base popularity with the mob by heaping uncalled-for insults on the king and queen. But though he had coquetted with the ultra- revolutionists, and allowed them to make a tool of him, he had not nerve for the villainies which it was now clear that they meditated. He had no taste for bloodshed; and, though gifted with but little acuteness, he saw that the success of the Jacobins and Girondins would lead neither to a republic nor to a limited monarchy, but to anarchy; and he had discernment enough to dread that. He therefore now sincerely desired to save the king's life, and even what remained of his authority, especially if he could so order matters that their preservation should be seen to be his own work. He was conscious also that he could reckon on many allies in any effort which he might make for the prevention of further outrages. The more respectable portion of the Parisians viewed the recent outrages with disgust, sharpened by personal alarm. The dominion of Santerre and his gangs of destitute desperadoes was manifestly fraught with destruction to themselves as well as to the king. The greater part of the army under his command shared these feelings, and would gladly have followed him to Paris to crush the revolutionary clubs, and to inflict condign punishment on the authors and chief agents in the late insurrection. If he had but had the skill to avail himself of this favorable state of feeling, there can be little doubt that it was in his power at this moment to have established the king in the full exercise of all the authority vested in him by the Constitution, or even to have induced the Assembly to enlarge that authority. He so mismanaged matters that he only increased the king's danger, and brought general contempt and imminent danger on himself likewise. His enemies had more than once accused him of wishing to copy Cromwell. His friends had boasted that he would emulate Monk. But if he was too scrupulous for the audacious wickedness of the one, he proved himself equally devoid of the well-calculating shrewdness of the other. If, subsequently, he had any reason to congratulate himself on the result of his conduct, it was that, like the stork in the fable, after be had thrust his head into the mouth of the wolf, he was allowed to draw it out again in safety.