“I do not say any thing to you of our actual position:  it is too heart-rending.  It ought to afflict every sovereign in the universe, and still more an affectionate relation like you.  It is only time and patience that can bring back men’s minds to a healthy state.  It is a war of opinions, and one which is still far from being terminated.  It is only the justice of our cause and the feeling of a good conscience that can support us ...  My most sincere wish is that you may never meet with ingratitude.  My own melancholy experience proves to me that, of all evils, that is the most terrible.”

Yet no indignation at the thanklessness of the Parisians could chill her constant benevolence toward them; and amidst all the anxieties which filled her mind for herself, her husband, and her child, she founded an asylum for the education of a number of orphan daughters of old soldiers, and found time to give her careful attention to a code of regulations for its management.[10]

Meanwhile circumstances were gradually paving the way for her accepting the help of him who, during the earliest discussions of the Assembly, had been, not so much through his own malice as through Necker’s folly, her worst enemy.  We have seen how, immediately after the attack on Versailles, Mirabeau had once more endeavored to find an opening through which to place himself at her service.  He alone, perhaps, of all men in the kingdom, perceived the reality and greatness of the danger which threatened even the lives of the sovereigns;[11] and, as amidst all the errors into which his regard for his own interests, his vindictiveness, or his caprice impelled him, he always preserved the perceptions and instincts of a genuine statesman, many of the transactions of the winter increased his conviction of the peril in which every interest in the whole kingdom was placed, if the headlong folly of the Assembly could not be restrained, and if even, proverbially difficult as such a course is, some of its acts could not be rescinded; while one transaction, which, more than any other that had yet taken place, showed the greatness of the queen’s heart, much sharpened his eagerness to prove himself a worthy servant of so noble-minded a mistress.

Some of the magistrates who still desired to discharge their duty had instituted an investigation into the conspiracy which had originated the attack on Versailles, and all its multiplied horrors.  They had examined a great body of witnesses, whose evidence left no doubt of the active part taken in it by the Duc d’Orleans and his partisans, and by Mirabeau, whether he were to be included among that prince’s adherents or not; but they conceived it specially important to procure the testimony of the queen herself.  However, it was in vain that they applied to her for the slightest information.  Appeals to her indignation, to her pride, and to her danger, were equally disregarded by her.  No denunciation of those who, whatever