"Besides, none of these kings whose help you seek is able to make war. Two empires, or rather an empress and a minister, deeply hate us but they are powerless! Catherine of Russia and William Pitt. Your envoy to Pitt, the Princess Lamballe, can get him to do much to prevent France becoming a republic, but he hates the monarch and will not promise to save him. Is not Louis the Constitutional King, the crowned philosopher, who disputed the East Indies with him and helped America to wrest herself from the Briton's grasp? He desires only that the French will have a pendant to his Charles the Beheaded."
"Oh, who can reveal such things to you?" gasped the Queen.
"The same who tell me what is in the letters you secretly write."
"Have we not even a thought that is our own?"
"I tell you that the Kings of Europe are enmeshed in an unseen net where they write in vain. Do not you resist, madam: but put yourself at the head of ideas which will otherwise spurn you if you take the lead, and this net will be your defense when you are outside of it and the daggers threatening you will be turned towards the other monarchs."
"But you forgot that the kings are our brothers, not enemies, as you style them."
"But, Madam, if the French are called your sons you will see how little are your brothers according to politics and diplomacy. Besides, do you not perceive that all these monarchs are tottering towards the gulf, to suicide, while you, if you liked, might be marching towards the universal monarchy, the empire of the world!"
"Why do you not talk thus to the King?" said the Queen, shaken.
"I have, but like yourself, he has evil geniuses who undo what I have done. You have ruined Mirabeau and Barnave, and will treat me the same—whereupon the last word will be spoken."
"Dr. Gilbert, await me here!" said she: "I will see the King for a while and will return."