concile herself to some
curtailment of her husband's former authority.

Thanking him for the assurance of his friendship, she says: "Believe me,
my dear brother, we shall always be worthy of it. I say we, because I do
not separate the king from myself. He was touched by your letter, as I was
myself, and bids me assure you of this. His heart is loyalty and honesty
itself; and if ever again we become, I do not say what we have been, but
at least what we ought to be, you may then depend on the entire fidelity
of a good ally.

"I do not say any thing to you of our actual position: it is too heart-
rending. It ought to afflict every sovereign in the universe, and still
more an affectionate relation like you. It is only time and patience that
can bring back men's minds to a healthy state. It is a war of opinions,
and one which is still far from being terminated. It is only the justice
of our cause and the feeling of a good conscience that can support us ...
My most sincere wish is that you may never meet with ingratitude. My own
melancholy experience proves to me that, of all evils, that is the most
terrible."

Yet no indignation at the thanklessness of the Parisians could chill her
constant benevolence toward them; and amidst all the anxieties which
filled her mind for herself, her husband, and her child, she founded an
asylum for the education of a number of orphan daughters of old soldiers,
and found time to give her careful attention to a code of regulations for
its management.[10]

Meanwhile circumstances were gradually paving the way for her accepting
the help of him who, during the earliest discussions of the Assembly, had
been, not so much through his own malice as through Necker's folly, her
worst enemy. We have seen how, immediately after the attack on Versailles,
Mirabeau had once more endeavored to find an opening through which to
place himself at her service. He alone, perhaps, of all men in the
kingdom, perceived the reality and greatness of the danger which
threatened even the lives of the sovereigns;[11] and, as amidst all the
errors into which his regard for his own interests, his vindictiveness, or
his caprice impelled him, he always preserved the perceptions and
instincts of a genuine statesman, many of the transactions of the winter
increased his conviction of the peril in which every interest in the whole
kingdom was placed, if the headlong folly of the Assembly could not be
restrained, and if even, p