ing from the ministers, who were glad to get rid of him, a
diplomatic mission to England as a pretext for his departure; and
Mirabeau, who despised both the duke and the marquis, full of contempt for
the pusillanimity which the former had shown in the quarrel, abandoned all
idea of placing him on his cousin's throne. "Make him my king!" he
exclaimed; "I would not have him for my valet."

Emboldened by his success with the duke, La Fayette, who had great
confidence in his own address, next tried to win over or to get rid of
Mirabeau himself. He proposed to obtain an embassy for him also. The
suggestion of what was clearly an honorable exile in disguise was at once
declined.[5] He then offered him a large sum of money, for at that moment
he had the entire disposal of the civil list; but he found that the
great orator was disinclined to connect himself with him in any way, much
more to lay himself under any obligation to him. In fact, Mirabeau was at
this moment hoping to obtain a post in the home administration, where, if
he could once succeed in procuring a footing, he had no doubt of soon
obtaining the entire mastery; and the royal family was hardly settled at
the Tuileries before he applied to his friend, the Count de la Marck, whom
he rightly believed to enjoy the queen's good opinion, begging him to
express to her his ardent wish to serve her. He even drew up a long
memorial on the existing state of affairs, indicating the line of conduct
which, in his opinion, the king ought to pursue; the leading feature of
which was an early departure from Paris to some city at no great distance,
that he might be safe and free; while in the capital it was evident that
he was neither. And the step which he thus recommended at the outset
deserves attention as being also that on which a year later he still
insisted as the indispensable preliminary to whatever line of conduct
might be decided on.

But at this moment his advice never reached those for whom it was
intended. La Marck, with all his good-will both to his friend and to the
court, could not venture to bring before the queen's notice the name of
one who, only a few days before, had denounced her in the foulest manner
in the Assembly for having appeared at the soldiers' banquet, and whom she
with her own eyes had beheld uniting with the assailants of the palace. He
thought it more politic, even for the eventual attainment of his friend's
objects, to content himself for the tim