plan, system, and policy was to make his individualism tell, to
demonstrate, to all parties, what he was worth in journalism as a
writer, in the Assembly as an orator, in every thing as a statesman. As
he had nothing but himself, it became his business to make the most of
the commodity, which, so valueless in the beginning, ended in
outworthing all that was opposed to it.

But if this policy of display, no less than his education, sympathies,
and hates, bore him to the opposition, there were in his pecuniary
wants, and his ambitious dreams of a statesmanship, _a la Richelieu_,
circumstances that at times resistlessly brought him within the
influence of court power. Uncertain how far he could overpower the
disadvantages of his personal position, wounded that the movement party
were little inclined to value his co-operation, and still less to accept
his leadership, he early felt, or feigned alarm at the fermentation in
the public mind, and its possible evolution in great national
calamities; and before one act of legislation was accomplished, or he
had had a month's experience of the fanatical impracticability of one
side, I use his own words, and the intolerant spirit of resistance on
the other, he personally proposed to his enemy, Necker, and through him
to the queen, "the only _man_," he said, "connected with the court," to
concur, at the price of an embassadorship to Constantinople, in
supporting the court system of policy.

He appears to have fancied for some days that his proposals were
accepted; but before he could enter on any of the Eastern arrangements
his active mind had already suggested, he learned that the overture was
rejected "with a contempt which," as Madame Campan sagaciously admits,
"the court would doubtless have concealed, if they could have foreseen
the future." Contenting himself with the angry menace, "They shall soon
hear some of my news," within a month he became the author of successive
defeats, the most insulting a monarch could receive from his parliament,
and which were fated to exercise an active influence in the overturn of
that royalty he was afterward to defend.

The king, anxious to arrange the differences which kept the three orders
aloof from each other, and from legislation, had sent to the
_Tiers-Etat_ a message, wise in its suggestions, and conciliatory in its
tone. Under the eloquence of Mirabeau, the house passed to the order of
the day.

Irritated by insult, and complaining