to the soul at
their piteous want, and distributed immense sums for the relief of the
poor sufferers, as did the Duc de Penthievre, the Duchesse d'Orleans, the
Prince de Conde, the Duc and Duchesse de Bourbon, and others; but these
acts were done privately, while he who had created the necessity took to
himself the exclusive credit of the relief, and employed thousands daily
to propagate reports of his generosity. Mirabeau, then the factotum
agent of the operations of the Palais Royal and its demagogues, greatly
added to the support of this impression. Indeed, till undeceived
afterwards, he believed it to be really the Duc d'Orleans who had
succoured the people.

"I dispensed two hundred and twenty thousand livres merely to discover
the names of the agents who had been employed to carry on this nefarious
plot to exasperate the people against the throne by starvation imputed to
the Sovereign. Though money achieved the discovery in time to clear the
characters of my royal mistress and the King, the detection only followed
the mischief of the crime. But even the rage thus wickedly excited was
not enough to carry through the plot. In the faubourgs of Paris, where
the women became furies, two hundred thousand livres were distributed ere
the horror could be completely exposed.

"But it is time for me to enter upon the scenes to which all the
intrigues I have detailed were intended to lead--the removal of the Royal
Family from Versailles.

"My heart sickens when I retrace these moments of anguish. The point to
which they are to conduct us yet remains one of the mysteries of fate."

SECTION VI.

"Her Majesty had been so thoroughly lulled into security by the
enthusiasm of the regiments at Versailles that she treated all the
reports from Paris with contempt. Nothing was apprehended from that
quarter, and no preparations were consequently made for resistance or
protection. She was at Little Trianon when the news of the approach of
the desolating torrent arrived. The King was hunting. I presented to
her the commandant of the troops at Versailles, who assured Her Majesty
that a murderous faction, too powerful, perhaps, for resistance, was
marching principally against her royal person, with La Fayette at their
head, and implored her to put herself and valuables in immediate safety;
particularly all her correspondence with the Princes, emigrants, and
foreign Courts, if she had no means of destroying them.

"T