other side.

This was followed by Mirabeau's _Secret Correspondence with the
Court_. His prevarication and double-dealing as a popular leader in
the pay of the king had long been known. At least twenty persons were
in the secret. One man, leaving Paris hurriedly, left one paper, the
most important of all, lying about in his room. Unmistakable allusions
were found among the contents of the Iron Chest. One of the ministers
told the story in his _Memoirs_, and a letter belonging to the series
was printed in 1827. La Marck, just before his death, showed the
papers to Montigny, who gave an account of them in his work on
Mirabeau, and Droz moreover knew the main facts from Malouet when he
wrote in 1842. For us the interest of the publication lies not in the
exposure of what was already known, but in the details of his tortuous
and ingenious policy during his last year of life, and of his schemes
to save the king and the constitution. For the revolutionary party,
the posthumous avowal of so much treachery was like the story of the
monk who, dying with the fame of a saint, rose under the shroud during
the funeral service, and confessed before his brethren that he had
lived and died an unrepentant hypocrite.

Still, no private papers could make up for the silence of the public
archives; and the true secrets of government, diplomacy and war,
remained almost intact until 1865. The manner in which they came to be
exhumed is the most curious transaction in the progress of
revolutionary history. It was a consequence of the passion for
autographs and the collector's craze. Seventy thousand autographs were
sold by auction in Paris in the twenty-eight years from 1822 to 1850.
From the days of the Restoration no letters were more eagerly sought
and prized than those of the queen. Royalist society regarded her as
an august, heroic, and innocent victim, and attributed the ruin of
the monarchy to the neglect of her high-minded counsels. It became a
lucrative occupation to steal letters that bore her signature, in
order to sell them to wealthy purchasers. Prices rose steadily. A
letter of the year 1784, which fetched fifty-two francs in 1850, was
sold for one hundred and seven in 1857, and for one hundred and fifty
in 1861. In 1844 one was bought for two hundred francs, and another
for three hundred and thirty. A letter to the Princess de Lamballe,
which fetched seven hundred francs in 1860, went up to seven hundred
and sixty in 1865, whe