The traditional narrative of the Assemblée législative, 1791–1792, offers us an inexplicable couple: an idéologue Madame de Staël combined with a failed Brumairian Narbonne, a society thinker and the plotter of a coup. “Quelle gloire pour Mme de Staël et quel plaisir pour elle,” wrote the queen when Narbonne became Minister for War, “d’avoir ainsi toute l’armée [...] à elle!” The queen saw here a salon intrigue, and historians have repeated this old topos of the weak but authoritarian man and his intriguing mistress. But analyzing the couple’s writings, as Chapter 3 does, offers the means to grow beyond this legend of caprice and iron fist. We will find the trace of a team effort divided between two professionals, and a progressive program for which Staël appears to have been the inspiration, if not the author.