ABSTRACT
This was the time when Lamartine was at the zenith of his fame. He seemed a saviour to all who had been harmed or frightened by the revolution, and they were the great majority of the nation. Paris and eleven departments had just elected him to the National Assembly. I do not think anybody else has ever inspired such transports of enthusiasm; one must have seen love goaded by fear to understand the silly extremes of affection of which men are capable. Every deputy arriving in Paris, determined to restrain the excesses of the revolution and to fight against the demagogic party, regarded him from the start as the only leader and waited for him to put himself unhesitatingly at the head of the fight against the socialists and demagogues. They soon discovered that they were mistaken and that Lamartine did not see the part he ought to play in such simple terms. One must recognize that his position was very complicated and difficult. It was forgotten at the time, but he himself could not forget, that he had done more than anybody else for the success of the February Revolution. Terror momentarily obliterated this memory from the public mind, but as public order returned, the fact would, of course, soon be remembered. It was easy to foresee that as soon as the current that had brought things to their present state had been stopped, a current in the reverse direction would carry the nation the opposite way faster and farther than Lamartine could or would go. The Montagnards' success would entail his immediate ruin, 108but their complete defeat would render him useless, and sooner or later it could and should make rule slip from his hands. He therefore saw almost as many disadvantages and dangers for himself in victory as in defeat
