n his ambition; influenced by
the insidious suggestions and doubts he carefully spread abroad, the
queen, as he saw with pleasure, looked on the new commander of the
National Guards as a "Grandison-Cromwell" (Mirabeau's damaging epithet),
whose concealed ambition aimed at the constableship of France, as a step
to that dread of French sovereigns, the "Mayorship of the Palace;" and
hence the court systematically declined the aids it might so often have
derived from the honesty, the popularity, and sometimes the good sense
of the American volunteer. At all events, we know that the assassination
of Lafayette--twice it seems plotted--would have left the National
Guards in the hands of some less popular and more pliant chief; and
that, when the general specifically accused his rival of the horrid
project, naming time, place, and means, he won no better defense than
the reply, "You were sure of it, and I am alive! How good of you! And
you aspire to play a leading part in a revolution!" The compact with the
Comte de Provence was of short duration: the queen began to distrust the
personal views of her brother-in-law, who threatened to become the Duke
D'Orleans of a philosophical party, and Mirabeau, to whom popularity was
the only capital, probably found that he could not afford the sacrifices
his employers demanded.

To preserve the _status quo_, and wait events, became now, for some
weeks or months, as much his policy as his accessibility to passion and
sudden influences would permit. He seemed to feel that he should give
time to the molten lava of his volcanic greatness to settle, harden, and
assume its individualism among things received. Holding aloof,
therefore, from indentification with either party--leaning now on one
side, now on the other; his speeches more with the movement, his policy
more with the court; forcing both parties into explanations, while
keeping himself, however, disengaged--he constituted himself their
arbitrator and moderator, overawing both extremes; and while maintaining
his pre-eminence of political influence, held himself ready to take
advantage, at the least cost of consistency, of any fundamental change
in the position of affairs.

In the month of May or June, however, a private interview with the
queen, in the Royal Garden of St. Cloud, followed by others, to the
renewed scandal of her fame, laid the foundation of a new compact with
the court, and a more decided policy. The chivalry of Mirabeau