"Does the king know this?" asked Marie Antoinette. "Has any one told his majesty?"
"I should not have taken the liberty of speaking to your majesty about these things if the king had not authorized me," replied Count de la Marck, bowing. "His majesty recognizes it to be a necessary duty to gain Mirabeau to the throne, and he hopes to have in this matter the cooperation of his exalted wife."
Marie Antoinette sadly shook her head. "I will speak with his majesty about it," she said, with a sigh, "but only under circumstances of extreme urgency can I submit to this, I tell you in advance."
But the case was of extreme urgency, and when Marie Antoinette had seen it to be so, she kept her word and conformed to it, and commissioned Count de la Marck to tell his friend Mirabeau that the queen would grant him an audience.
But in order that this audience might be of advantage, it must be conducted with the deepest secrecy. No one ought to suspect that Mirabeau, the tribune of the people, the adored hero of the revolution—Mirabeau, who ruled the National Assembly, and Paris itself, whom the freest of the free hailed as their apostle and saviour, who with the power of his eloquence ruled the spirits of thousands and hundreds of thousands of men,—no one could suspect that the leader of the revolution would now become the devoted dependant upon the monarchy, and the paid servant of the king.
Two conditions Mirabeau had named, when Count de la Marck had tried to gain him over in the name of the king: an audience with the queen, and the payment of his debts, together with a monthly pension of a hundred louis-d'or.
"I am paid, but not bought," said Mirabeau, as he received his first payment. "Only one of my conditions is fulfilled, but what will become of the other?"
"And so you still insist on having an audience with the queen?" asked La Marck.
"Yes, I insist upon it," said Mirabeau, with naming eyes. "If I am to battle and speak for this monarchy, I must learn to respect it. If I am to believe in the possibility of restoring it, I must believe in its capacity of life; I must see that I have to deal with a brave, decided, noble man. The true and real king here is Marie Antoinette; and there is only one man in the whole surroundings of Louis XVI., and that is his wife. I must speak with her, in order to hear and to see whether she is worth the risking of my life, honor, and popularity. If she really is the heroine that I hold her to be, we will both united save the monarchy, and the throne of Louis XVI., whose king is Marie Antoinette. The moment is soon to come when we shall learn what a woman and a child can accomplish, and whether the daughter of Maria Theresa with the dauphin in her arms cannot stir the hearts of the French as her great mother once stirred the Hungarians." [Footnote:Mirabeau's own words.—See "Marie Antoinette et sa Famille." Far M. de Lescure. p. 478.]
"Do you then believe the danger is so great," asked La Marck, "that it is necessary to resort to extreme, heroic measures?"