d absurdity of which had been
demonstrated to the satisfaction of the whole world four years before. Nor
was it wholly a Jacobin plot. La Fayette himself was, to a certain extent,
an accomplice in it. As commander of the National Guard of the city, it
was his duty to apprehend one who was an escaped convict; but instead of
doing so he preferred identifying himself with her, and on one occasion
had what Mirabeau rightly called the inconceivable insolence to threaten
the queen with a divorce on the ground of unfaithfulness to her husband.
She treated his insinuations with the dignity which became herself, and
the scorn which they and their utterers deserved; and he found that his
conduct had created such general disgust among all people who made the
slightest pretense to decency, that he feared to lose his popularity if he
did not disconnect himself from the plotters. Accordingly, he separated
himself from the lady, though he still forbore to arrest her, and for some
time confined himself to his old course of heaping on the royal family
these petty annoyances and insults, which he could inflict with impunity
because they were unobserved except by his victims. It is remarkable,
however, that Mirabeau, who held him in a contempt which, however
deserved, had in it some touch of rivalry and envy, believed that the
queen was not really so much the object of his animosity as the king. In
his eyes "all the manoeuvres of La Fayette were so many attacks on the
queen; and his attacks on the queen were so many steps to bring him within
reach of the king. It was the king whom he really wanted to strike; and he
saw that the individual safety of one of the royal pair was as inseparable
from that of the other as the king was from his crown.[7]" And this
opinion of Mirabeau is strongly corroborated by the Count de la Marck,
who, a few weeks later, had occasion to go to Alsace, and who took great
pains to ascertain the general state of public feeling in the districts
through which he passed. During his absence he was in constant
correspondence with those whom he had left behind, and he reports with
great satisfaction that in no part of the country had he found the very
slightest ill-feeling toward the queen. It was in Paris alone that the
different libels against her were forged, and there alone that they found
acceptance; and, manifestly referring to the projected departure from
Paris, he expresses his firm conviction that the moment that s