June 11, another deputy, M. Delsaux, said from the tribune: "Last evening, at half-past seven, passing through the Tuileries, I saw an orator standing on a chair and speaking with great vehemence. Mixing with the crowd, I heard him read a libel strongly inciting to the King's assassination. This libel is called, 'The Fall of the Idol of the French,' and these sentences occur in it: 'This monster employs his power and his treasures to hinder our regeneration. A new Charles IX., he wishes to bring desolation and death to France. Go, cruel wretch; thy crimes shall have an end. Damiens was less guilty. He was punished by most horrible tortures for having desired to deliver France from a monster. And thou, whose offences are twenty-five million times greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scævola amongst us.'"
The Assembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"
In the ministry, as elsewhere, discord reigned. At first, the ministers had seemed to be of one mind. They dined at each other's houses four times a week, on the days when there was a meeting of the Council. Friday was Roland's day for receiving his colleagues at his table, where his wife presided and perorated. "These dinners," says Etienne Dumont, "were often remarkable for their gaiety, of which no situation can deprive Frenchmen when they meet in society, and which was natural to men contented with themselves and flattered by their elevation. The future was hidden from them by the present. The cares of the ministry were forgotten. They seated themselves in their dwellings as if they were to abide there forever." This sort of political honeymoon could not last very long. Things presently began to change for the worse. Dumouriez tired very soon of Madame Roland's pretensions; she wanted to know, see, and direct everything, and he persisted in refusing to transform himself into a puppet whose strings were to be pulled by this woman and the Girondins. Madame Roland, who { 159} posed as a puritan, caused remonstrances to be addressed to Dumouriez on the subject of some more or less suspicious affairs, said to have been negotiated by Bonne-Carrère, the director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by which Madame de Beauvert was supposed to have gained large sums. The wife of the Minister of the Interior had a grudge against the favorite of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "She is Dumouriez's mistress," said she; "she lives in his house and does the honors at his table, to the great scandal of sensible men, who are friendly to good morals and liberty. For this license on the part of a public man charged with State affairs marks too plainly his contempt for decorum; and Madame de Beauvert, Rivarol's sister, very well and very unfavorably known, is surrounded by the tools of aristocracy, unworthy in all respects." One evening, after dinner, Roland, "with the gravity belonging to his age and character," as his wife says, gave a lecture on morality to the Minister of Foreign Affairs apropos of this matter. At first Dumouriez made jesting replies, but afterwards showed temper and appeared displeased with his entertainers. Thereafter he seldom visited the Ministry of the Interior. Reflecting on this, Madame Roland said to her husband: "Though not a good judge of intrigue, I think worldly wisdom would dictate that the hour has come for getting rid of Dumouriez, if we wish to avoid being ruined by him. I know very well that you would be unwilling to lower yourself to such an { 160} action; and yet it is plain that Dumouriez must be seeking to disembarrass himself of those whose censure has offended him. When one undertakes to preach, and does so in vain, he must either punish or expect to be molested."