He might be of service again, he might be
reconciled! He writes, he speaks of his exalted queen with
admiration, with enthusiasm; he glows with a longing desire to
confess his sins at the feet of your majesty, and to receive your
forgiveness."
"Does the king know this?" asked Marie Antoinette. "Has any one told
his majesty?"
"I should not have taken the liberty of speaking to your majesty
about these things if the king had not authorized me," replied Count
de la Marck, bowing. "His majesty recognizes it to be a necessary
duty to gain Mirabeau to the throne, and he hopes to have in this
matter the cooperation of his exalted wife."
Marie Antoinette sadly shook her head. "I will speak with his
majesty about it," she said, with a sigh, "but only under
circumstances of extreme urgency can I submit to this, I tell you in
advance."
But the case was of extreme urgency, and when Marie Antoinette had
seen it to be so, she kept her word and conformed to it, and
commissioned Count de la Marck to tell his friend Mirabeau that the
queen would grant him an audience.
But in order that this audience might be of advantage, it must be
conducted with the deepest secrecy. No one ought to suspect that
Mirabeau, the tribune of the people, the adored hero of the
revolution--Mirabeau, who ruled the National Assembly, and Paris
itself, whom the freest of the free hailed as their apostle and
saviour, who with the power of his eloquence ruled the spirits of
thousands and hundreds of thousands of men,--no one could suspect
that the leader of the revolution would now become the devoted
dependant upon the monarchy, and the paid servant of the king.
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