his sword, saying that
there was nothing else for a gentleman to do, when the king abandoned
his sceptre. Mirabeau himself was indignant with what he called a
pantomime; for he said that Ministers had no right to screen their own
responsibility behind the inviolate throne. He saw that his patron was
ingeniously set aside and stranded, and he conceived that his own
profound calculations were baffled. Yet the perspicacity that he
seldom wanted failed him at that moment. For the reconciliation of
the people with the king, the executive triumphing in its popularity,
guiding the Revolution to its goal, was the exact reproduction of his
proposals, and was borrowed from his manifestoes.

The significance of this was at once felt by the foreign advisers of
the queen. Mercy Argenteau, who had been Austrian ambassador
throughout the reign, and who was a faithful and intelligent friend,
suggested that if they sincerely accepted the policy, they would do
well to take the politician with it, that the Count of Provence could
be best disabled by depriving him of his prompter, that the magic is
not in the wand but in the hand that waves it. The queen hesitated,
for Mirabeau had threatened her in the last days at Versailles, and it
was not yet proved that he was not concerned in the attempt to murder
her. She declared that nothing would induce her to see him, and she
wished for somebody who could undertake to manage him, and who would
be responsible for his conduct. Mercy, regardless of her scruples,
sent for La Marck, who was at his Belgian home, opposing the Emperor,
and fostering a Federal republic, and who in consequence was not in
favour with Marie Antoinette. La Marck was intimate with Mirabeau, and
kept him in pocket money. He undertook the negotiation, with little
hope of a profitable result; and at his house Mercy and Mirabeau had a
secret meeting. They parted, well pleased with each other. Mirabeau
advised that the king should leave Paris, and the advice bore fruit.
Mercy did not declare the intentions of the Court, and Mirabeau
continued to act in his own way, treating with Lafayette for money or
an embassy, and attacking the clergy, with whose cause Lewis was more
and more identified. To this interval belongs the famous scene where
he exclaimed that from the place where he stood he could see the
window from which a king of France fired on his Protestant subjects.
Maury, not perceiving the snare, bounded from his seat, and c