Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/512

498 more evident that the clubs, and through the clubs the mob, were gaining in power and audacity. The leaders of the clubs, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and Desmoulins, taught the utmost contempt and execration for all ranks and above the mere rabble.

She felt that it could not be long ere the assembly itself would be overwhelmed by the fanaticism of the republicans, and that there must be a deluge of bloodshed, in which the royal family would disappear first. During the sojourn of the court at St. Cloud, in the autumn of this year, she, therefore, entertained many plans of escape. The king would listen to none. Driven almost to despair, Marie Antoinette, catching at the faintest hope of rescue, now resolved on what she had hitherto recoiled from, an interview with Mirabeau.

This extraordinary man had for the greater part of the year been receiving a prodigal pension from the court, for his services in maintaining the royal cause in the assembly, and in devising and assisting in a plan of escape for the king. It was not only as a lover of monarchy, but as a greater lover of the assembly and the people, that Mirabeau could, under the circumstances of the country, hope to effect anything. A little too much enthusiasm on behalf of the monarch, and he would have lost all his popularity, and with it all his power for any purpose. He, in consequence, depended much more on the escape of the king to some place out of the reach of the assembly than on any efforts within that body. He therefore proposed that means should be devised for the king and royal family to escape to the army under Bouillé, but that Louis should not place himself entirely in the power of Bouillé, but should take up his residence at Lyons, whilst Bouillé should encamp at Montmedly. From Lyons he proposed that the king should, by a proclamation, express to the nation his real views and feelings regarding the new constitution, which he never could do but at the risk of his head, so long as he was in the power of the assembly and of the mob. Mirabeau had artfully drawn from most of the deputies their private views, in writing, of the constitution, and in comparing them, he found that each one condemned some particular article, and thus, taken altogether, the body of deputies in reality condemned every article in it. He proposed that these private confessions should be appended to the king's proclamation, as the most telling reason why he did not approve more or less of the constitution, which was thus altogether condemned by the whole of the assembly which had passed it. This plan had been communicated to Bouillé by a foreign