roverbially difficult as such a course is, some
of its acts could not be rescinded; while one transaction, which, more
than any other that had yet taken place, showed the greatness of the
queen's heart, much sharpened his eagerness to prove himself a worthy
servant of so noble-minded a mistress.

Some of the magistrates who still desired to discharge their duty had
instituted an investigation into the conspiracy which had originated the
attack on Versailles, and all its multiplied horrors. They had examined a
great body of witnesses, whose evidence left no doubt of the active part
taken in it by the Duc d'Orleans and his partisans, and by Mirabeau,
whether he were to be included among that prince's adherents or not; but
they conceived it specially important to procure the testimony of the
queen herself. However, it was in vain that they applied to her for the
slightest information. Appeals to her indignation, to her pride, and to
her danger, were equally disregarded by her. No denunciation of those who,
whatever had been their crimes, were still the subjects of her husband,
could, in her eyes, be becoming to her as queen; and when those who hoped
to make a tool of her to crush their political rivals urged that no
evidence would be accepted as equally conclusive with hers, since no one
had seen so much of what had taken place, or had in so great a degree
preserved that coolness which was indispensable to a clear account of it,
and to the identification of the guilty, her reply was a dignified and
magnanimous pardon of the outrages beneath which she had so nearly
perished. "I have seen every thing; I have known every thing; I have
forgotten every thing;" and Mirabeau, not unthankful for the protection
which her magnanimity thus throw around him, was eager to make atonement
for his past insults and injuries.

And many of the recent events had convinced him that there was no time to
lose. The vote of November, debarring him, in common with all other
members of the Assembly, from office, was a severe blow to the most
important of his projects, so far as his own interests were concerned.
Within a month it had been followed by another, proposed by the Abbe
Sieyes, a busy priest who boasted that he had made himself master of the
whole science of politics, but who was in fact a mere slave of abstract
theories, the safety or even the practicability of which he was utterly
unable to estimate. On his motion, the Assembly, in a sing