d to La Fayette, and in whose _salon_ the Duc d'Orleans
occasionally met him. After a conversation, heard by the walls alone,
but the result of which showed its tenor, and which Mirabeau, to whom it
was communicated, termed _very imperious on the one side, and very
resigned on the other_, it was agreed that the Duc d'Orleans should
forthwith set out for London. The friends of the prince induced him to
change his resolution that same night, and he sent La Fayette a note to
this effect. La Fayette requested another interview, in which he called
upon him to keep his word, enjoined him to depart in twenty-four hours,
and then conducted him to the king. There the prince accepted the
feigned mission, and promised to leave nothing neglected to expose in
England the plots of the conspirators of the kingdom. "You are more
interested than any one," said La Fayette in the king's presence, "for
no one is more compromised than yourself." Mirabeau, cognisant of this
oppression of La Fayette and the court over the mind of the Duc
d'Orleans, offered his services to the duke, and tempted him with the
last offers of supreme power. The subject of his address to the Assembly
was already prepared: he intended to denounce, as a conspiracy of
despotism, this _coup d'etat_ against one citizen, in which the liberty
of all citizens was attempted. "This violation of the inviolability of
the representatives of the nation in the palpable exile of a prince of
the blood; he was to point out La Fayette, making use of the royal hand
to strike the rivals of his popularity, and to cover his own insolent
dictatorship under the venerated sanction of the chief of the nation and
the head of the family." Mirabeau had no doubt of the resentment of the
Assembly against so odious an attempt, and promised the friends of the
Duc d'Orleans one of those returns of opinion which raise a man to a
higher elevation than that from which he has fallen. This language,
backed by the entreaties of Laclos, Sillery, Lauzun, a second time shook
the prince's resolution. He saw now disgrace in this voluntary exile,
where at first he had only seen magnanimity. At the break of day he
wrote that he declined the mission. La Fayette then sent for him to the
minister for foreign affairs. There the prince, again overcome, wrote to
the Assembly a letter, which destroyed beforehand all the denunciation
of Mirabeau. "My enemies pretend," said the duke to La Fayette, "that
you boast of having