"Nations are great organized bodies, subject to human disease. Sometimes it is emaciation, and then tonics are necessary; sometimes it is plethora, and then bleeding is prescribed. You tell me that the Republic is a chimera. I agree with you that it is now. And that is where your error comes in. We are not yet a Republic; we are in the midst of a revolution. For a hundred and fifty years kings have ruined us; for three hundred years nobles have oppressed us; for nine centuries priests have held us in slavery. The time has come when the burden has grown too heavy for the backs which bear it, and '89 has proclaimed the Rights of Man, reduced the clergy to the rank of other subjects of the kingdom, and abolished every kind of privilege. "There remained the king, whose rights had not been touched. He was asked: 'Will you accept France as we shall remodel it, with its three orders--the people, clergy, and nobility--each depending on the other; will you accept the constitution with the privileges which it accords you, the revenues it grants you, the duties it imposes on you? Reflect carefully. If you refuse, say No, and abdicate; if you accept, say Yes, and take the oath.' "The king said Yes, and took the oath. "The next day he left Paris; and so confident was he that all due precautions had been taken and that he could reach the frontier in safety, that he sent this message to the representatives of the nation, who had received his oath on the previous evening: "'I have been compelled to take the oath; it was made with the lips and not the heart; I hold my duties in abeyance, and resume my rights and privileges; and I will return with the enemy to punish you for your revolt.'" "You forget, general," said Fauche-Borel, "that those whom you call the enemy were his own family." "Well," said Pichegru, "that is just the trouble. The king's family were the enemies of France. But how could it be otherwise? Half of the blood that flowed in the veins of Louis XVI., son of Louis XV. and a princess of Saxony, was not even French blood; he married an archduchess, and we have for the royal armorial bearings, the first and third quarters of Lorraine, the second of Austria, and the fourth only of France. The result is as you have said. When Louis XVI. quarrels with his people he appeals to his family; but as the family is the enemy of France, he appeals to the enemy, and as the enemy enters France at the summons of the king, he commits the crime of high treason against the nation--a crime as great as high treason against the king, if, indeed, it is not greater.